All the World's a Stage
by Vivian Verbose
Summary: Across time and space, destiny would definitely shove these two love-idiots into each other's lives. One-shot series of Skip Beat AU stories focusing on the life, times, troubles, and romance of Ren and Kyoko. Star Wars AU, Detective AU, Haunted House AU, Fairytale AU, Beauty and the Beast AU, Post-Apocalyptic AU, Hangover AU, Superhero AU.
1. In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Hello loyal readers!

Thank you all so much for stopping by. All the World's a Stage is going to be a series of Skip Beat AU one/two-shots that will focus mainly on the relationship between Ren and Kyoko in many different situations and circumstances. In my own head canon, across multiple universes, despite trials and against all odds, our favorite pair are destined to be together.

Please alert this story if you want to be notified of the next installment (Detective/Thriller AU), which should be out in a month.

Please also note that Kyoko and Ren are not as "Japanese" in this one-shot (since this is Star Wars!) and thus are a little more blunt and refer to each other by their first names.

Without any further ado, please enjoy the show…

 **-x-**

 _ **A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…**_

One hundred years after Luke Skywalker's noble sacrifice and the fall of the First Order at the hands of the young Jedi Rey, a new evil has begun gathering strength in the Outer Rim. To combat the growing Imperial Regime, the fledgling Revolution sends Ren Tsuruga, an exceptional knight on loan from the still-recovering Jedi temple system, to the desolate swamp planet of Hakara. His mission is to investigate the unspeakable claims that the Sith have been revived and now lead the cruel, totalitarian Regime.

 **-x-**

The first thing Ren notices is that the girl is in trouble. There's a whole squadron of Storm Troopers closing in on her small, brown-cloaked figure, and for a moment, Ren considers staying seated at the cantina's muggy bar, out of sight and out of the line of fire.

However, two more thoughts come to mind: one, the Jedi as a general rule, aim to help the downtrodden and oppressed; two, if this girl has a whole squadron after her, there's a high chance she's of use to the Imperial Regime, and thus doubly useful for the Revolution.

Therefore, he argues in his mind, Master Takarada won't be that upset with him if he blows his cover now in order to intervene. Maybe he'll still have a chance to find the informant before the kriff hits the fan.

The Storm Troopers have the girl surrounded, blasters all leveled at her vital points when the sound of a lightsaber powering up provides an ample distraction. The whole squadron turns on him, but by the time they start firing, it's already too late. In a whirl of green, he's already gracefully sliced through half of them, and as for the rest, he effortlessly redirects their blaster fire. There are yells as the soldiers are struck by their own bolts and fall to the ground.

A heavy silence fills the air. Ren assumed that the girl would break down weeping at her unexpected good fortune, and the Jedi is unprepared for the stony quiet that instead ensues.

"You're a Jedi," is the thing she finally says. Her heavy brown hood stays up as she regards him from the shadows within, her hands still held up in a defensive posture. Ren is a bit surprised since nowadays, despite having over a hundred years to recoup their losses, Jedi are still a bit of a rarity. Most of the locals he's come across are usually awed and sometimes frightened by his powers – if not wooed by his dashing good looks. But this girl states it clearly, as if she were reporting that the climate on Jakku is dry or that Ewoks enjoy eating all manner of meat.

"Yes, I am. You can relax by the way," Ren replies, powering down his saber and using it to gesture at her combat-ready pose. "You're welcome, also. You know. For saving you."

"Oh." The girl pauses, then her mouth makes a comically large 'O'. Apparently she's come to some sort of dramatic realization. She slowly lowers her hands but makes no move to remove the hood. "Thanks…"

"So what'd you do?" Ren asks as he clips his lightsaber back onto his belt, trying to be nonchalant. "Steal the plans for the next Starkiller Base?"

The girl laughs nervously. "Something like that..."

"We can help each other out." Ren gives his best Million-Credit Smile – the one that regularly makes the female Revolutionaries of his not-so-secret fan club swoon. "You might have something that's valuable to the Revolution. And I could offer you protection–."

"Not interested."

Like slamming a door shut in his face, the girl spins on her heel and is three steps away by the time Ren realizes that a female humanoid has actually rebuffed his advances. He has to run after her to catch up.

"Wait. You're in trouble, right?" As he matches her stride for stride, Ren shakes his head, almost disbelieving the situation.

The girl nods and raises her chin up slightly to shoot him a defiant glare. "Yeah. So?"

Beyond the shadow of the hood, the Jedi notices her eyes are a special tint of amber-gold. He's travelled over three different star systems, and he's never felt so captivated by a stare – or a glare rather. The man who once smooth-talked a Hutt into a business deal without any Force-compulsion now stumbles over his next words, "I-I have a ship. I can help you out of here get. Er – Get out of here."

On the inside he's dying. Mentally, he slaps himself. C'mon Tsuruga!

He takes two long strides in the squelching mud path until he's in front of her, blocking the way, and he holds his hand out, palm up. He stares hard into her eyes, willing her to take his offer. "I can help you."

The girl looks up at his face, then down at his hand, then back at his face. Sensing her emotions of uncertainty across the Force, Ren wills himself not to fidget as he endures her scrutiny. But then she sighs deeply, mutters another "No, thank you," weaves around him, and is gone.

The Jedi knight is deciding whether he should try to follow her or give up in favor of his original mission when his handheld unit beeps on his belt. Ren groans and hopes it's good news. Though on a day like this…

"Ren, it seems that our informant has ditched your planet." Yashiro, his Revolutionary contact, speaks over the secured line. "He ran into some trouble on his usual Nerf smuggling route and escaped as soon as he could. I'm sending you the coordinates of his next–"

"I changed my mind!"

Something is yanking at his sleeve, and suddenly he's being dragged along through the swamp planet's sparsely populated marketplace. Through his disorientation, Ren notices that it's the girl pulling him forward, and she has a surprisingly strong grip.

"Wait, what–?"

"I need… protection! Or something. Just take me with you!"

Ren must have been very distracted indeed to have missed this imbalance in the Force. Because that's when he notices the blaster fire zooming past them both and the thunder of a whole platoon of Storm Troopers' boots as they rampage through the village.

"R-Right!"

It's only once they've hopped into his X-Wing and have hit hyperspace, leaving Hakara behind, does he realize he never even properly introduced himself.

"Ren Tsuruga, huh…"

In response to his self-introduction, the girl fidgets with the hem of her hood before pulling it down, revealing a long auburn braid slung over one shoulder and the most alarmingly disarming pair of golden eyes he's ever seen.

"Kyoko" is the name that plays on his lips like sparkbee honey for the rest of the day.

 **-x-**

The informant's new coordinates are all the way across the galaxy, close to the Revolution's main base. Therefore, Ren reasons, it's an efficient use of time if he personally transports Kyoko back to base after rendezvousing with his contact. When nosy Master Takarada inquires as to why his apprentice seems much more chipper during his holo-report, Ren dodges the issue. The highly unorthodox, anti-celibacy Jedi Master would probably become unbearable if he knew his apprentice knight was transporting an attractive and feisty young woman across the galaxy to safety.

The matters of 'from whom' or 'for what purpose' Kyoko requires saving remain a mystery. Even though she boarded Ren's starship, she apparently has no intention of speaking about herself. As Ren tries to fill the silence with conversation and casual-but-pointed questions, the strange girl just stares out the window at the cold vacuum of space. Her lips thin in mild annoyance as the only response to his queries.

Whenever he runs out of topics to talk about or lets the silence run to allow her a chance to fill it, all she does is stare outside. She draws her knees up to her chest, looking like a wounded, hunted animal that would bite if cornered. Even the gentle Force probe that Ren performs from the front seat of the cockpit reveals little. She is feeling afraid, angry, and betrayed, but most of all confused. The object of her emotions remains tumultuous, just out of reach of Ren's mind, and he is loath to press further without her knowledge.

However, even with the hyperspace jumps, the trip will still take them about a standard week to trek from one end of the galaxy to the other. Ren is certain that without the Force, he can tease the information from her at one point or another during their journey.

Though, it takes the entire first day of their voyage to get her to verbally respond. Ren finally gets a break only as he tears a one-quarter portion of polystarch bread open with his teeth and asks his guest if she'd like to share dinner. Her response is absolute horror.

She stares at his hand holding the dusty packet of deconstructed carbohydrate powder in one hand and the tin cup of water in the other before her eyes narrow and she glares back at him. Ren is ready to make the insta-bread and take the first bite to show her it's not poison when she launches into a lengthy diatribe about the importance of nutrition and proper sustenance. It's more than she's said the whole day combined, so Ren doesn't mind when she insists he land on the closest inhabited planet and stalks off angrily to the market to buy some "real food". As he stands by silently holding the basket and watches her fiercely haggle for produce and meat, Ren considers the ice broken.

Apparently among other mysterious talents, Kyoko is a fantastic cook. For a young man who has grown up on the bland rice porridge of a Jedi temple and the freeze-dried portions of flight academy, everything that Kyoko cooks is masterful. Due to his upbringing, Ren typically doesn't even enjoy eating and he cannot eat much, but once Kyoko tunes her dishes to his light stomach, he is hooked.

 **-x-**

They are four standard days away from the smuggler's coordinates, grounded on the isolated forest planet of Kirtania, specifically for the purpose of cooking a decent meal. Somehow, their question and answer sessions have become a game of absurdity.

"So why are you running from the Regime?" Ren asks with a smirk.

"Because," Kyoko replies with a barely smothered laugh, "I obtained their deepest, darkest state secrets by impersonating a humanoid poultry dignitary from Bo'nian."

Ren is internally celebrating that he has finally gotten her to laugh – an innocent yet alluring sound – when the ground starts shaking.

For a moment, the Jedi is concerned that his droid had forgotten to scan the planet for unstable tectonic plate movement before landing when the ground beneath their campfire buckles then erupts. Enhancing his movement speed with the Force, Ren dashes over to Kyoko and picks her up just as claws rip through the ground below.

As the Jedi knight sets Kyoko gently on her feet and draws his lightsaber, he notes that the beast – one he's never seen or heard of before – seems to be a hybrid between a reptilian and mammaloid. It towers ten feet above the two travelers, its six burly, fur-lined appendages melding into a scaly, armor-plated body complete with a spiked tail.

The beast lets loose a deafening roar that reverberates through Ren's bones.

"I'm going to distract it!" He yells in Kyoko's direction. "You run for the ship!"

"But–!" Kyoko voice sounds panicky.

The creature's eyes burn a phosphorescent green as they dart over to its prey.

Ren's eyes widen. He shifts his cloak over one shoulder, freeing his saber arm and taking his fighting stance as he desperately tries to center himself in the Force. "Go now!"

To his relief, as he closes his eyes to concentrate, he hears her scramble away. The six-armed beast charges at Ren – he can feel its bounding steps shaking the ground and feel its rage swell and draw swiftly near.

Exhaling a calming breath, Ren's eyes flash open, and he dodges an instant before the creature's claws can separate his head from his shoulders. Using the Force to push himself off the floor, the Jedi somersaults in the air over the beast, slashing at its back with his saber. Sparks fly as the lightsaber connects but the thick armor plating on the animal's back prevents the sword from melting through it like a hot knife through Nerf butter.

Ren flips again off the trunk of a nearby tree, lightsaber aimed for the empty, unplated space between the beast's shoulder and neck. A quick movement catches his eye.

One of the creature's arms is reaching for Kyoko as she runs for the X-Wing. Ren yells out a warning and quickly Force-pushes her just out of the way. However, his attention diverted, he doesn't see the gigantic arm speeding to swat him out of the air until it is too late.

The burly arm connects with his chest, and Ren hardly has time to cry out in pain before he's slung into a tree trunk. The trunk cracks as Ren's back and head connect with the solid wood, and then he falls limply five feet to the ground.

Coughing and wheezing, the breath knocked out of him, Ren groans and winces at the onslaught of pain. Through the blurriness in his vision, he sees a large, lumbering form charging him.

'Well, that can't be good,' he thinks wryly to himself as he struggles to get to his feet. He reaches for his lightsaber… But he must have dropped it.

Blinking away the rest of the blurriness, Ren staggers, hand on the tree trunk to steady himself, and wonders briefly if Kyoko had managed to get the ship alright. KNH331 would be able to pilot the X-Wing for her to get her to safety.

Then an emotional pulse of righteous fury catches his attention. Ren's eyes dart to the left, watching a brown-cloaked blur dash forward. The small figure grips his green lightsaber as she yells a furious battle cry, her golden eyes glittering dangerously in the low light. Ren holds a hand up and yells at her to stop – or he tries but he still hasn't caught his breath.

But his dread turns to awe as she executes a perfectly timed roll to dodge past the beast's two arms that had intended to send her flying. Her first strike scrapes against the hardened armor on the creature's arms as it blocks her attack. However, Kyoko simply readjusts and leaps away toward the treeline, out of range.

For a Force-insensitive girl, she wields his lightsaber like a natural. In mild disbelief, Ren even reaches out feelers of his mind to ensure that she actually isn't using the Force. As expected, he's met with the blank vacuum of a non-sensitive, but that doesn't make her form any less beautiful as she finally slides underneath the beast, slicing upward through one of the creature's arms into a joint without armor.

The amputated appendage drops heavily to the floor, and the beast roars again, this time a defeated bellow of pain, before it bounds off back to its hole. As it burrows away in search of easier prey, Kyoko sheaths the saber, her breathing heavy.

Ren is about to straighten to walk over and join her when she whirls on him, her golden eyes still fierce and angry. The Jedi swallows nervously as the young woman stomps over to him. For a moment, it looks like she is going to hit him, and Ren mentally steels himself.

But then she deflates and settles for shoving the lightsaber back into its owner's surprised hands.

"Don't do that ever again," Kyoko mutters, glaring at the ground.

Ren cocks his head to the side (then hides the wince of pain from his bruised neck), "Don't do what?"

Kyoko's hands flutter about as she tries to come up with the right thing to say, "You know – Sacrificing yourself to save me – or whatever!"

The Jedi just watches the young woman deflate. She looks off to the side, avoiding eye contact. "I'm… I'm not worth saving."

Frowning, Ren reaches forward to caress the top of her head, but his hand turns coward and settles onto her shoulder. He squeezes comfortingly and gives her a small, genuine smile. "Yes, you are."

Her uneasy silence and the sense that she's about to pull away drive Ren to joke again. A small spark of amusement enters his eyes.

"Another thing…"

Kyoko looks up.

"You're welcome. You know. For saving you… again."

She stares at him blankly for a moment before her cheeks puff into a pout. "Well, I saved you too, so _there!_ "

Ren laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "You're right. Thank you, Kyoko."

She's quiet a moment, as the amusement fades from her eyes. She stares down at their ruined campsite.

"Thank you too Ren," Kyoko finally replies, her voice barely above a whisper. Ren has a distinct feeling that she's not talking about saving her from the beast.

 **-x-**

"So why are you doing this – on the run from the Regime?"

"Because I once wore an outfit so unbearably pink that it offended the Empress of the Regime from two star systems away."

 **-x-**

Two standard days from the endpoint of the trip, the duo stop to refuel on some lush tropical planet that Ren can't pronounce in Basic. While some droid technicians are paid to take care of the ship, the Jedi and his passenger venture into town. The plan is for Kyoko to buy more food and for Ren to gather information.

Ren has been chatting up a particularly talkative Mon Calamari merchant who trades near the Regime's fleet when a scantily-clad Togruta woman sidles up to the bar next to him.

He's still trying to see if his previous conversation can be salvaged before making his escape from this obvious temptress, when he sees Kyoko standing stiff in the doorway. Her eyes are as wide as a Gungan's and grow wider still as the Togruta leans in and runs a titillating hand down the front of his robe. Before he can step away, however, the woman seems to lean forward a bit too much out of her seat and pitches to the floor.

To Ren's brain, the physics don't quite add up, but the rest of him is thankful for the out as he quickly steps over the fallen Togruta and out the door.

But Kyoko is gone, and for a scary moment, Ren fears that she has taken off in his ship. Then he rounds the bend, and the X-Wing is still in the bay, Kyoko sitting in the rear seat. She welcomes him back with a smile before they take off again.

Ren isn't fooled. Her smile may be warm but her eyes are empty and pained.

Gently, carefully, and without any mind tricks, he asks and pries the memories from her.

There was a boy, a childhood friend, her betrothed. She gave her heart to him, and time and again, he threw it away like trash. Many a time though she were his promised bride, she caught him with other women, and he showered them with an affection and physical warmth he'd never shown her. Eventually, he convinced her to run away from home with him so he could live a life of adventure. She told herself that this invitation meant she was special to him. But as soon as he'd had what he wanted, he had left her, all alone in the galaxy.

As Ren makes the jump into hyperspace, he's careful to handle each memory like a crystal vase, fragile and precious and weighty. However, during her story, the Jedi senses a sudden surge in pained rage – a dark feeling – before it's gone, whipped away like a sheet in the wind.

There is silence for a bit, the blue and white lights of hyperspace flashing by, as Ren thinks and Kyoko settles back from her tale.

Then Ren says suddenly, his voice low and heavy with conviction, "I wouldn't abandon you, you know. I could never throw you away."

She doesn't respond, but when he gathers the courage to turn and see her expression, she is staring out the window of the craft, a light blush dusting her cheeks. Her lips twist into a small, melancholy smile.

 **-x-**

"So, why are you doing this?"

"Because some pushy guy insisted on dragging me halfway across the galaxy for my own protection."

 **-x-**

The planet of Yanibar has an entire star system named after it, because the planet is the only thing of consequence in its own vast vicinity. On the far border of the Outer Rim, Yanibar is the last sign of civilization before Wild Space and thus, despite the planet's harsh, unforgiving weather and barren wasteland of a surface, it's a frequently trafficked stop for smugglers, outlaws, and fugitives.

After confirming with KNH331, Ren touches down the X-Wing about 15 klicks south of the main trading port, essentially in the middle of nowhere. But this is where the coordinates from Yashiro direct him – and it makes sense. A Nerf smuggler is unwelcome even in a rough-and-tumble port like Yanibar's. This informant would not be a particularly pleasant acquaintance to make, but a small price to pay for what he had claimed was invaluable intel on the Empress and her rumored Sith apprentice.

The landing thrusters have a difficult time fighting against the gale-force winds whipping across the slate-gray surface, and Ren watches in discomfort as the wind batters debris against the cockpit shield. He turns back to Kyoko who seems even more hesitant than he is. She has grown silent over the past several hours, withdrawing more and more into herself. Now, the young woman stoically gazes out into the rocky wasteland, and a flash of far-off lightning reflects off her golden eyes before darkening again.

Ren suggests that it would probably be best if she stayed in the X-Wing. No use in both of them getting soaked to the bone by the approaching storm. It'll just be a quick errand, then they will be on their way to the Revolution's base. Kyoko merely nods and draws the hood of her cloak up, hiding her face in shadow.

On the surface, Ren trudges forward, clasping his brown cloak to his body and feeling his large frame battered every which way by unforgiving winds. Eventually, about a hundred feet from the ship, he hears the high-pitched whine of a swoop bike over the roar of the storm. In the distance, a speck grows closer and closer.

Finally, the swoop parks, and its occupant, a tall rakish humanoid with blonde hair, dismounts off the anti-gravity bike. The man shakes his blonde hair out and raises the goggles off his brown eyes, which narrow at Ren with immediate dislike.

"You the Jedi?" The smuggler yells over the boom of thunder. Rain starts coming down in sheets as the storm arrives. Ren merely steps forward and removes his hood in reply.

"Sho Fuwa," the Jedi has to holler his stoic greeting over the wind and rain, "Let's make this quick."

The Nerf smuggler's grunt is lost to the noise of the storm, and he reaches behind his back. Ren feels uneasy but senses no deception from the blonde. Finally, Fuwa produces the object that had been hooked onto his belt.

"A lightsaber?" Ren yells, perplexed. Then he feels the shadowy energy tendrils of the Dark Side beckoning to him through the Force. His heart falls. It's a Sith lightsaber. The rumors are true. The Sith have risen again. "Where did you get this?"

"The apprentice." Sho shuffles nervously on his feet and waves the sheathed saber at Ren as if eager to rid himself of the sword. "The Empress' apprentice came after me on Hakara. That's why I had to bail on you the first time."

"Why?" Ren demands. So the Regime's Empress is, as feared, a Sith Lord after all. "Why would the leaders of the Imperial Regime be concerned about a Nerf smuggler?"

"Because," Sho snaps and waves the saber again, offering it to Ren. With his other hand, he offers a small holo-screen. "I know who they really are."

The holo-screen buzzes to life, the blue hologram wavering and fritzing out over his palm in the torrential rain. But the picture is clear enough to take Ren's breath away.

She's smiling in this picture, her face radiant and pure. Beside her sits a reluctant younger Sho, clearly uncomfortable with the hug she is giving him.

"Kyoko?" Ren can't seem to look away from the hologram, his hammering heart trying to desperately deny the image his brain is processing.

Sho's voice is confused. "How'd you know her name?"

"Because she–" Ren finally tears his eyes away and glances up. He breaks off. Something is terribly wrong. The Nerf smuggler's mouth is open in an unfinished scream, his eyes wide and unseeing. It's as if he's frozen in time, and the air thrums with the Force.

The lightsaber in Sho's hand wiggles, and Ren hopes for a moment that the wind has merely worked it loose. But then it flies, zipping through the air, straight into the awaiting hand of the cloaked figure standing behind him.

The Jedi knight whirls as the woman he had previously thought a non-user powers on the blood-red saber with an ominous hum.

The shock must show on his face, because as she tilts her head to the side, a malicious smirk on her face, she offers an explanation. "Your Force sense isn't failing you, Jedi. I was born with the ability to disguise my Force use. I can be anyone or anything I want to be."

The hooded woman blinks and like a bulb switching on and off, Ren feels the Light surge from her and just as suddenly, all he senses is a thick, oppressive curtain of Dark. The Dark Side is so strong that he feels nauseated.

How could he have missed this?

Taking advantage of his distraction, the Sith apprentice leaps forward, lightsaber striking a wide slash aimed at his torso. Moving on instinct alone, Ren powers on his own saber and just manages to parry the blow, green clashing against red.

The parry leaves his guard wide open and the female Dark Sider uses the opportunity to pivot and kick him soundly in the gut. Ren stumbles back, unable to fully recover from the sudden flurry of attacks, but manages to block the attack from above as his opponent somersaults in the air, aiming for his neck with a downward stroke of her saber. The lightsabers buzz and hum angrily as they meet, hissing as the rain strikes the swords.

Finally recovering enough to counter, the Jedi Force-pushes her up and away, then he dashes forward to reengage her before she can quite regain her footing on the slippery rock. However, her small size lends her greater agility, and she easily dodges his saber slash, leaping away with a spry back handspring.

"Why?" Ren shouts across the distance and over the raging storm. He grips his saber tighter as the two foes begin to circle each other, trying to find an opening in the other's guard. "Why are you doing this?"

The young Sith apprentice laughs, a harsh and bitter sound so vastly different from the sound of her laughter before that Ren feels a chill go up his spine.

"Are we still playing this game?" She asks wryly, whirling her red lightsaber through the air, raindrops sizzling against the superheated surface. "Because my Master ordered me to kill the Nerf smuggler, and now that I have a chance to kill a Jedi knight, she will be even more pleased with me!"

An inconsistency – half a shadow of a doubt – tickles at the back of Ren's mind, but he has no time to dwell on this feeling because he has to focus his all on parrying a furious series of lightsaber strikes from his former companion.

Her rage is palpable in the air, feeding her connection to the Dark Side, but as the two lock sabers, the thunder booming and the swords humming discordantly, Ren feels fear. Her fear.

The Jedi senses that this is his only chance. Trusting the Force, Ren closes his eyes and follows the current of Kyoko's emotions into the core of her being. It takes a great deal of strain, but eventually, he pushes past the protective barriers into her mind.

It's like being caught in a maelstrom ten times the storm outside. Ren briefly wonders at how talented this young woman must be in order to be so powerful in the Force while still this conflicted on the inside. Then he is swept away in a riptide of memory fragments and inundating emotions.

" _Sho-chan!" A young voice calls. A swell of happiness as a young blonde boy in silk noble's robes turns and frowns at her._

And another.

 _An austere woman with night-black hair scowls down at the young girl with the bloodied arms and knees. "Such a disappointment," the noblewoman says archly as she Force-pushes a lightsaber back into the girl's hands. "Again. But actually_ try _this time."_

And another.

" _How useless. You're such a plain, boring girl," a familiar voice smugly states. The rugged blonde, no longer in aristocratic clothing, sneers down at her. "You should just go home, Kyoko."_

And yet another.

" _So much hatred… So much darkness…" The cold looking woman clasps the broken girl's chin tightly, turning it this way and that as if looking at an item she's about to purchase. "Maybe you'll be more useful this time."_

And finally.

 _The swamp planet of Hakara. The young woman snarls, a surge of rage propelling her forward to strike at the smuggler's neck with her lightsaber. But the saber stops a millimeter from its mark, hovering and humming dangerously. It's a test. Her mother has one final test for her, and if she kills him, then… She'll be accepted. She'll be wanted. She'll be_ loved _. Sho looks at her, fear rolling off him in waves. She loves this. She hates this. She wants to. She can't. Then the smuggler's hand moves and she hears the sound of blaster fire. Her last thought as she falls unconscious from his stun blast is that her mother will not be pleased with her failure. Fear spikes through her. Then nothing._

A small string of thoughts.

 _I don't want to hurt Ren. I don't want to be hurt again, but I don't want to hurt him._

Abruptly, a screaming, crying, clawing grip of energy wrenches him desperately from her mind.

Ren's eyes flash open the instant before Kyoko Force pushes him away. His arm shoots up to counter it, and he grabs her wrist, twisting it to the side. Their lightsabers stay locked at their chests.

"You're lying," he growls, struggling to overpower her. "You don't want to do this. You still have Light in you!"

The wind whips Kyoko's hood back, revealing her frightened, wide-eyed stare. Desperately, she presses back with her saber.

"No!" she gasps. The rain spatters against her face, her expression contorting as she fights tears. Ren senses the curtain of Darkness flicker, Light poking through. "I _have to_. I have to kill him. If I don't–!"

 _She won't love me anymore_.

"I love you," Ren declares boldly, yelling into the rain. "I love you and will love you more than she ever could."

A stricken look passes over Kyoko's face. The tension of her lightsaber on his lessens and her wrist goes the slightest bit slack in his grip. Then she shakes her head, renewing her efforts against him. Her voice is insistent and panicky. "No! You're lying. Just empty promises. Just like _him_. Just like–!"

"Just like your mother?" Ren asks gently, his voice scarcely audible over the dying wind. Her eyes grow wider, and she can't seem to look away from his intense gaze. "Who do you _really_ have to pretend around, Kyoko? Who are you really?"

The only sound is the whisping whir of the dying breeze and the spattering of raindrops as the storm passes. Finally, her tears fall. Her lightsaber powers down, and Ren disengages his as well.

She stares up at him, the tears glistening in her eyes. The mask of the Dark Side crumbles as more and more Light pours through. Not entirely Light, some parts still pockmarked in Darkness, but after his damaged past, neither is his soul wholly Light either.

"I'm scared," Kyoko rasps. Her voice is small and afraid. Her golden eyes search his for answers. "I'm so scared that no one will ever love…me."

Ren looks down at her, a small joyful smile on his lips. "I already do."

"Do you…" Her voice wavers. "Do you really…?"

Ren nods down at her, and opens up the barriers of his mind so all his emotions and thoughts are laid bare for her to peruse. He watches as she closes her eyes and feels as she meanders through, picking up and mulling over each moment he's shared with her.

After several moments, Kyoko's eyes flutter open and she smiles, joyous and bright. A heavy blush dusts her cheeks. The dark-haired Jedi slides his hand up from her wrist to intertwine their fingers. His lightsaber drops to the ground as he uses his other hand to gently tip her chin up toward him.

The two share a kiss. A mixture of Light and Dark. The Force in perfect balance.

 **-x-**

 **OMAKE**

"So… What do we do with this guy?"

"I guess I can't just leave him frozen like that…"

Someone grunts as if he has just fallen to the floor unconscious.

"I'm amazed you were even able to sustain that maneuver while fighting me."

"It wasn't that hard. What has your Jedi master been teaching you?"

"That it's ok to break celibacy and that the old Jedi order is antiquated and in need of more 'love.'"

"…"

"I think he'd enjoy meeting you."

"As long as he doesn't stick me in some cheesy reform group, I'll be just fine."

 **-x-**

 **Please don't forget to leave a review, a fave, and add an alert to get notified when the next installment of this series gets updated! Also, if you aren't here from it already, check out my long-running fic, Spy Beat! It's nearing its climactic end and is updated on a monthly basis.**


	2. The Shinigami 1

Hello loyal readers!

Thanks so much for continuing to read this pet project of mine! Today's chapter has Kyoko and Ren acting as partners in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Special Investigation Team, which is in charge of investigating and apprehending dangerous criminals.

 **PLEASE NOTE:** This two-shot comes with a strong trigger warning. Individuals suffering from depression or suicidal ideations may not have a safe experience reading this chapter. Themes addressed in this story include the prevalent problem of suicide in Japan. NO CHARACTER DEATHS WILL OCCUR IN THIS STORY.

Alert this story if you want to be notified of the next installment (a non-AU Halloween special), which should be out in less than a month!

 **-x-**

* * *

 **The Shinigami – A Detective Thriller**

Even from kilometers away, the stench from the sixth victim's body was thick in the humid summer air. Detective Mogami tried to slow her breathing and avoided inhaling through her nose as she trekked along the wooded trail after the two men. The lead, a local Yamanashi officer, slowed as he approached the yellow police tape and nodded to his fellow policeman standing guard.

Detective Tsuruga trailed the prefecture cop, and her dark-haired partner performed a perfunctory bow to the guard before ducking under the yellow barrier as well. Trotting a couple steps to catch up, Detective Mogami executed a rigid bow then turned, surprised and sheepish to find that her senpai was holding the tape up for her to enter.

"You found the victim hanging, correct?" the senior detective asked the local policeman as he let go of the tape behind Kyoko and the trio continued off-trail.

"Yes, sir," the officer noted grimly as he led them along the leaf-covered ground into the wilderness of the national forest. He broke off to greet a forensics photographer holding a large camera and a heavy equipment case who was walking back toward the main trail. All four law enforcement personnel bowed and exchanged social pleasantries before continuing on.

"I do not mean to sound rude," Detective Tsuruga hazarded as they continued down the hillside, "but Aokigahara is well-known as a suicide forest. What made your team think that this victim is connected with our case?"

"The marks," the policeman noted grimly. "We were notified from your nation-wide briefing to be on the alert for any suicide victims with the markings detailed in your report."

Kyoko and Ren exchanged a cheerless glance. This wasn't going to be another wild goose chase.

 **-x-**

In bits and pieces, almost a third of the victim's body was gone – the product of accelerated decomposition from the August heat and forest wildlife. To keep her own emotions under wraps, the junior detective tried not to think about how this young woman – who looked to be in her mid-twenties and still had a bit of mascara clinging to her lashes – might have been pretty in life.

'This is a piece of evidence – not a person,' Kyoko had to repeat like a protective mantra in her mind.

However as Ren's gloved hand brushed away the soiled cotton of the victim's sleeve, the junior detective noted with sorrowful distaste, the marks were there. Almost indistinguishable in the rotting tissue, were a multitude of small puncture wounds on the fleshy part of her – _its_ , Kyoko reminded herself – its shoulders.

"I'll give Chief Takarada a call," Kyoko mused weakly.

"If you'd please," Detective Tsuruga said, his face somber as he straightened and started back up the hill. "It looks like we have a sixth victim after all."

 **-x-**

Yashiro Yukihito, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's coroner, had first noticed the pattern seven months earlier. Sometimes – he would confide in Ren over a hard drink or two after work – sometimes, he wished he hadn't caught it at all. The marks were innocuous. The victim was a failing college student who'd been stressed cramming for exams.

Despite the tragedy, the manner of death was relatively unremarkable – a suicide by jumping from her cramped studio apartment's twentieth-story balcony. In a repressed and self-oppressed city like Tokyo where the stakes were high and the expectations even higher, the case was entirely unsuspicious. Just another statistic.

But something, a tickle of instinctual remembrance, prompted the coroner to ask his coworker about another suicide victim he'd commented on earlier that week. Sawara had grimaced and said that yes, he remembered the young career woman. She had killed herself after a getting fired from her company. She'd overdosed on heroin or some other injectable drug. Yashiro had asked him why Sawara had assumed that. The tox screen in the other coroner's report had come up clean aside from some trace amounts of anxiety medication, which they'd found in her bathroom cupboard. Sawara had shrugged.

Because the marks on her arms, Sawara had said. They were obviously needle marks from repeated IV drug use.

After speaking with Yashiro, Ren had dug up info on the rest. Three other known suicide victims, beside Yashiro's current autopsy body and Sawara's past case, had the marks – who knew how many others had never been recorded – and suddenly, the TMPD's Special Investigation Team had a serial killer on its hands.

However, according to Yashiro, not all was bleak and hopeless during this time period. Mogami Kyoko had been promoted to the S.I.T. in the midst of the third month of the hunt. Despite a rocky start with her new partner, she had managed to turn Detective Tsuruga Ren's clockwork life upside-down – but in a good way, if one were to believe the bespectacled coroner.

 **-x-**

"So, how is it going with Kyoko-chan?" A slightly inebriated Yukihito prodded. A smile crept over his face that was far too girlish to grace the face of a man in his mid-thirties.

Nursing an almost empty glass of whisky at the bar of the traditional Japanese restaurant, Ren turned. Not this again. "I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, Yashiro-san."

"Don't give me that sparkly smile. It's creepy."

The detective's ironically polite, 'Drop it before I hurt you,' smile faded until he was openly scowling at his coworker.

"Dating!" The coroner slurred. "Aren't you two dating yet? It's been four whole months of you two dancing around each other!"

"Mogami-san and I have a purely professional relationship. Nothing more."

"Are you sure there hasn't been progress though?" Yashiro broke out into a gleeful titter behind an open hand. "After all, a little birdy told me that she spent the night at your place last week~!"

A 'little birdy' called Chief Takarada, Ren cursed in his mind. Outwardly, he felt that defensive smile creep back onto his face. "We were just going over case files late into the night. Detective Mogami and I are coworkers. Nothing more."

"Are you sure it's not more?" The coroner prodded, his glasses gleaming with mischief in the low light of the restaurant.

"Well…" Ren had to look away and take a sip of his drink to cover the blush threatening to darken his cheeks. "Maybe… friends?"

His colleague wilted. "You poor, pitiful man with low standards…"

"Oh, Yashiro-san! What a pleasant surprise!"

Startled, Ren spluttered and almost spat out a mouthful of alcohol onto the bar. That voice!

"Ah! Tsuruga-senpai!" Kyoko rushed over and began simultaneously apologizing and whacking her superior on the back as he coughed, the bitter liquid stinging his throat and nose.

"Kyoko-chan!" Yukihito brightened, ignoring his friend's plight. "What brings you to the Darumaya?"

Past his best efforts to collect his dignity, Ren heard her chirp brightly, "I'm meeting someone for dinner! Oh, I see him."

As he finished coughing, Ren's heart sank. 'Him?' He thought.

"Sho-chan! Over here!"

As she waved vigorously, Kyoko's voice took on a girlish tone Ren had never heard her use at the station before. With mounting horror, Ren watched a young, gruffly handsome blonde man saunter up to the bar. The blonde – Sho, as Ren gathered – gave the detective an angry once-over. Ren scowled back.

Ignorant of her two companions' silent glare-war, Kyoko happily introduced, "Tsuruga-senpai, Yashiro-san, this is Fuwa Sho, my–"

"Childhood friend," the blonde huffed, narrowing his eyes at Ren. Suddenly Sho smirked, "And current flatmate."

As Kyoko blushed cutely and stammered a protest at Sho for divulging such private information, Ren tried to hide his shock. His impression of Kyoko was that she was a staunchly conservative woman, almost to the point of being old-fashioned.

To have a male flatmate for a woman like Kyoko usually meant there was some kind of deeper relationship ongoing. Which – Ren assumed – was exactly what that smirking bastard wanted to imply.

Like throwing up a protective force field, the detective began to smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Fuwa-san. I'm Tsuruga Ren, Mogami-san's–"

"Friend!" Yashiro interjected, eyes wide in equal parts excitement and inebriation.

"Oh no, Yashiro-san!" Kyoko piped up, wagging a finger at him. "You can't say stuff like that when Tsuruga-senpai is my honored, talented, and almost god-like superior!"

Ren felt each of those exponentially distancing superlatives like a series of stabs to the gut.

Kyoko continued lecturing the coroner, "If you say it like that, it'll give people the impression that Tsuruga-senpai and I are on the same level – that we have anything other than a strictly professional relationship – and that is certainly not the case!"

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Rather than show his mounting depression in front of that blonde bastard's patronizing smirk, Ren instead dialed up the brilliance of his smile and turned to Kyoko.

"Mogami-san."

The junior detective flinched when she heard his tone, slowly turning to look at him in abject horror.

"If you praise me so highly, I'm bound to disappoint people in reality," Ren said, his polite smile out in full force. "Please take care not to exaggerate my person in the future."

Before Kyoko could prostrate herself on the ground and recite the string of lengthy apologies that Ren could guiltily tell were on the tip of her tongue, a rough jerk on the back of her collar cut her off.

"C'mon Kyoko," Sho barked as he dragged her away. "Are we going to eat dinner or what? Let's leave your _senpai_ –" He threw a pointed smirk over his shoulder. "– And go sit down."

Amid Kyoko's flustered protests and hasty good-byes to the two men, she followed her childhood friend toward the back of the restaurant into a booth.

The only thing Yukihito could do as they watched the couple leave was to pat Ren on the back pityingly.

Ren sighed, thought about ordering another whiskey, then tossed some money onto the counter. Without another word to his friend, the detective grabbed his coat and left the bar. He was more in the mood to drink at home anyway.

 **-x-**

 **-One Month Later-**

Three more victims were found with the marks before the two detectives finally found the forum. Kyoko had been spending yet another depressing day trawling through a deep-web page dedicated to suicide. Its cryptic forum link had been found on two out of the nine known victims' computers. Nothing too solid, but a lead was a lead…

Still, just skimming through the hundreds of posts, even after trying to harden her heart to it, the pain and desperation seeped into her bones. A couple of hard drinks after work at the Darumaya were definitely in order. On top of her own emotional instability the last few days–

Kyoko's hand ghosted through her newly dyed auburn bob before it dropped back down to the mouse pad.

–this was a bit much…

Then she clicked the next post thread entitled, "Together at the End". After skimming the content for a moment or two, the junior detective shot upright in her chair. Scrolling down more, she stopped to read another post. Then another, and another and another…

"Tsuruga-senpai! Come look at this!"

 **-x-**

Ren was equally amazed. Each and every victim had posted on this thread. Given, the forum was anonymous, encrypted, and on the deep-web – not exactly something that would pop up on a Google search of all the victims' names. (This was especially true since the media had gotten wind of the story two weeks ago, and now any Internet search of victims' names in a normal browser would only yield news articles on the 'Shinigami' – as the Tokyo media had christened their new serial killer.)

However, Ren read the forum's long, sometimes rambling posts – or rather, nine of them in particular. Each detailed the life events, tragedies, and hardships that had driven each of their victims to consider suicide in the first place. These details had been unearthed through careful forensics, interviews, and detective work and were not privy to the media. That, the time stamps on the posts, and the fact that each of these women had been murdered in the exact way they described in their own writings – Ren had to believe these posts were not a hoax.

Ren felt a churning in his gut as he reread the entree by the college student who had leapt out of her window – the first victim Yashiro had discovered. She had written a long, free-form poem about her pressures at home and school, the death of her grandfather, and a repeated, deep-seated desire to leap from her balcony – a desire matched only in intensity by her immense fear of death. She had ended her post with a plea – as all the other victims had in one form or another.

 _"Who will leap with me into the unknown?"_

The senior agent scrolled down and away, his heart heavy. He sensed Kyoko at his back, reading over his shoulder. Her small hand peeked around to point at the screen.

"Everyone on this thread is asking for someone to commit suicide with," she pointed out, her voice quiet and thin.

" _Shinjuu_ ," Ren mused as he leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. "Double suicide. You always hear about this stuff but…"

"But to think they have entire websites dedicated to it…" His partner finished, murmuring hoarsely.

A sudden thought struck Ren, and he leaned back into his computer, his finger scrolling quickly on the mouse's wheel. "Did you get a chance to see if the victims' posts received any replies?"

Apparently Kyoko had checked briefly, but each of the replies was from a different user, no consistent usernames. Frowning, Ren pressed the print button on screen and soon two sets of the forum thread were spewing out of his printer. He handed one stack to Kyoko with a red pen.

"What are we looking for?" She asked warily as she took the small sheaf of papers.

"Patterns," was his only reply.

Thirty minutes later, Ren set his pen down excitedly. All nine of the victims' posts had multiple replies – and multiple offers to share in death – but one reply on each post had stuck out to Ren. The responding usernames were all different – but these specific replies were usually the longest coherent ones, and the commenters – or as Ren suspected, _commenter –_ tried to gain the original posters' trust by appealing to them in a personal way.

Victim number two's mother had just passed from stomach cancer, and the victim felt responsible because of her inability to visit her mother due to busyness at work. The reply Ren had circled in red told a similar tale of a mother falling ill – but the reply was smart enough to say thyroid cancer – and bemoaned his regrets that he had not spent enough time with her because he was working overtime to pay for her hospital bills.

The same parallel sob stories on each of the victims' posts had ended with an offer to share the burden of passing and a salutation to the effect of: 'Your memory is safe with me' or 'I'll treasure your memory forever'.

"Mogami-san, look at this."

Looking up from her own copies of red-marked papers, Kyoko scooted over to Ren's side of the desk. He tried to ignore the warmth in his belly as stray hairs from her new short cut tickled his arm as she leaned over to peer at his stack. This was not the time for that, he sternly reminded himself.

Clearing his throat and then explaining his rationale, Ren pointed out the salutation at the end. All throughout his description, Kyoko nodded, deep in thought, but suddenly she gasped.

Sifting through her own stack, the junior detective finally found what she was looking for. She pointed at the bottom two posts.

His eyes flew straight to the posts' comments. Each had a lengthy reply with a salutation at the end.

"I'll cherish your memory always," he read aloud. His eyes widened. "These posts were made–!"

"Yesterday and this morning!" Kyoko finished. Breathlessly, she turned to Ren. "I'll contact the site administrator. Maybe he will be willing to give user account information to aid the investigation."

Ren frowned. "You can try that, but it's the deep-web, Mogami-san. People are here because they trust that they'll never be found."

Kyoko looked crest-fallen for a moment, before turning back to her desktop to scroll up and click the Contact Us link. She snapped over her shoulder, "Well, it wouldn't hurt to try."

Ren felt a pit in the bottom of his stomach. The mystery of Mogami Kyoko deepened. Her recent behavior had been… atypical to say the least. Something had changed in her life, but nothing she was willing to share – at least not with him. Every time he brought it up – even obliquely – she dodged the issue.

Maybe…she was telling him to mind his own business. Maybe he should show less interest in her. Maybe her coldness was her polite signal that he was getting too close and making her uncomfortable. He especially had no business showing interest in her… She was living with another man, after all, and was probably in a relationship with _him_.

Shaking his head to dismiss the thoughts, Ren turned back to his own computer screen on the other side of the desk to begin searching for the two girls by another track. Tracing one finger through the details of the two most recent posts, Ren began searching through Tokyo's missing persons database.

 **-x-**

"Kotonami Kanae," Kyoko dumped a handful of files on her senpai's desk half a day later, trying to hold back the eagerness in her voice as she watched him pick up the first file. "Reported missing by her family 42 hours ago. Traced her on CCTV from her home to Ueda station. I watched the video; she was staring at the tracks for almost an hour before a man approached her. She left Ueda station with the man."

"She's the poster who wanted to jump onto the tracks, I'm assuming," Ren murmured, not looking up. His voice was even and detached. Kyoko frowned. She had worked hard for this information. The least her partner could do was acknowledge her effort.

"I'm guessing the CCTV didn't get a good shot of the man's face?"

"He was wearing a hat and a cold mask," the junior detective grumbled.

"Did the site admin give you the other girl's name?"

"No…"

Once that dirty little cyberspace weasel had discovered she was a woman, he had demanded a specific type of payment for the second half of information… At the memory, Kyoko fought the indignant blush that rose to her cheeks.

She watched as Ren reached under his desk and handed her another stack of files. The auburn haired woman flipped the first one open as her senpai sat back in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankle.

"Amamiya Chiori?" Kyoko read. Her eyes flashed up, excited. "You found the other girl."

Ren nodded, his demeanor politely disinterested. Kyoko caught herself mid-frown. Why was Ren suddenly acting so coldly?

"Traced her job details from the post to a small company in Chiba," the senior agent said as he tapped a pen in measured strokes on the desk. "Per her manager, she had been the victim of a workplace accident. The company rumor mill did the rest. Coworkers were saying that she had rigged the accident to gain compensation. The rumors stuck."

Trying to hide her discomfort, Kyoko mused, "She was the one who said she wanted to walk into the ocean, right?"

Ren nodded. "Tracked her credit card. She purchased a bus ticket to Chigasaki City this morning. Officer Kijima obtained eye witness statements that she was seen around the beach for a while before leaving with a man."

Shaking her head, Kyoko growled, "I'll bet anything these two girls will be murdered by train and drowning."

"No reports of bodies yet," Ren retorted quickly. "They could still be alive."

The small hopeful smile forming on his lips, mirroring the one on her own, faded like a cloud passing over the sun. Her partner abruptly turned back to his desktop. Suddenly feeling awkward standing by his desk, Kyoko felt her own smile wither as she slunk back to her own seat.

Tsuruga-senpai was truly an enigma, Kyoko decided. She thought that she had been getting closer to him, but maybe it was just wishful thinking after all. Although… Kyoko ran her hand through her short hair before pushing the thoughts away to focus on an irrepressible idea that was brewing in the corners of her mind.

It was probably for the better this way, after all.

 **-x-**

"A sting operation?"

Kyoko tried to keep from fidgeting at the underlying disapproval in her senpai's voice. If Chief Takarada noticed her discomfort or Ren's instant dislike of the idea hidden behind his dazzling façade, the Tokyo Police Chief gave no indication.

"Yes." Lory nodded in Kyoko's direction. "It was Mogami-kun's suggestion, and she has volunteered to be the bait."

"With all due respect, Chief Takarada." The gentlemanly smile on Ren's mask-face only increased in brightness. "I believe it would be wiser to choose another approach. I do not believe that Mogami-san is… an appropriate candidate for an operation such as this."

Kyoko's anger flared. For the past week, she'd tried to keep her newfound rage in check as much as possible at work, but those words triggered the simmering bitterness in her heart like feather-light pressure on a bear trap.

She felt a responding sparkly smile slip over her face as she turned to her partner. "Please, do tell, Tsuruga-senpai, which other officer in the Special Investigations Team are you planning to send?"

In her concentration not to break the polite front and show her true infuriation, she missed the alarm in Ren's eyes past his mask and the look of amusement on the Chief's face.

"Who else in the department fits the killer's preferred target description?"

"Mogami-san, I merely meant–"

Hiding her anger, Kyoko politely ticked off on her fingers. "Twenty to thirty-five years old."

"–that this method will be quite dangerous–"

"Slender build."

"–and perhaps we ought to reconsider–"

"Recent emotional trauma," Kyoko managed.

"–our plan of attack."

"Female." She finished, then tilted her head to the side, still smiling but trying to keep the sarcasm from dripping through her voice. "Although, if you were planning to send Koga-senpai in disguise, while it would be quite amusing, I feel that you would meet stiff objection from both bait and suspect."

Attempting to smother his laughter, Chief Takarada ordered Kyoko to get started planning the sting op and shooed the two detectives out of his office. As the door shut behind them, Kyoko could not work up the nerve to lift her gaze to meet her superior's. Though she had gotten her way, the subtle argument with her partner had left her feeling empty.

She knew that she was projecting her anger onto the wrong target. Still the idea that even after almost half a year working together, Ren still had such a low opinion of her abilities... It hurt. But then again… when had anyone she cared about ever esteemed her in return?

As she moved to escape back to her desk, Kyoko felt a strong hand slip over her wrist. She froze.

"Wait." Ren's deep baritone was gentle, softening the command. Kyoko felt the warmth from his hand and had to suppress a shudder. Even more, she didn't dare look up at him. The way her heart was now… she couldn't take it. It wouldn't be fair to her partner.

"Yes, Tsuruga-senpai?" She forced her voice to be cold, clipped, professional.

Above her, Ren heaved a heavy sigh.

Great. He was disappointed in her. Instead of fear – which would have been her instinctual response just a week before – Kyoko felt anger spike again in the pit of her stomach.

Surprisingly, for someone so disappointed, his voice was hushed and hesitant. "Mogami-san… Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" Kyoko stared at the ground, tracing the whorls of the wood grain again and again with her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Tsuruga-senpai."

"This sting operation is–"

"It's our best chance to find the culprit!" In a flash of frustration, Kyoko turned to glare up at him. "And the other two girls. They could still be alive."

However, the intensity of the gaze that met hers forced Detective Mogami to lower her eyes again. She listened as Ren finished his interrupted sentence slowly with great gravity, "It's dangerous."

"We'll have backup in place…" The junior detective hazarded.

Abruptly, her partner shifted topics – a trick he had taught her to throw off suspects during interrogation. Belatedly, as she fell into his trap and gave him the reaction he was looking for, she wasn't even sure that he knew he was using this tactic on her now.

"Mogami-san, why did you change your hair?"

Kyoko stiffened.

"You haven't been acting quite yourself lately, and–"

The soft, warm feeling in her chest at his concerned tone sparked a very rapid secondary response: recognition and fear.

"Nothing's wrong," she heard herself snap a bit too forcefully. As if shoved into the passenger's seat, Kyoko seemed forced to watch as some other fury-filled young woman hijacked her body. All the nastiness she had been previously concealing now came tumbling out to air like dirty laundry she had been hiding, waiting to do in the privacy of her own home.

Ren opened his mouth to protest, but Kyoko interrupted him with a brusque, "It doesn't concern you. That's none of your business."

As if physically hit, the senior detective stopped abruptly. His tone next was taut like a bowstring about to snap. "You are my partner and subordinate, Mogami-san. That's the only reason I'm asking."

'Not because he actually cares about _you_ ,' the nasty little voice in the back of her mind whispered. 'Not because he sees you as a woman. No one ever will… What else were you expecting?'

Hand now hanging limply in her senpai's grip, the junior detective muttered off to the side, "If you don't mind, Tsuruga- _senpai_ , I have an operation to plan…"

After a heartbeat in which she was afraid – or hopeful, her treacherous heart thrilled – that he wouldn't let go, Ren released her hand. She promptly marched through the foyer in front of the Chief's office, across the marble flooring of the lobby, through the glass door into her department, past the organized chaos of the S.I.T.'s wooden desks and scurrying detectives, and into the only woman's single-stalled bathroom.

Turning the lock with a satisfying click behind her back, Kyoko finally felt free to release a heart-heavy sigh. The auburn-haired detective leaned back against the door for a moment, trying to collect herself.

When she finally had the willpower to wander over to the bathroom mirror, the girl that stared back was gaunt-looking. The short, dyed hair that had seemed like such a freeing rebellion only weeks before now seemed like an obvious tell.

Kyoko bent over the sink, gripping the porcelain with white knuckles. She stared at her red-rimmed eyes and the tip of her nose that was threatening to turn a matching crimson.

"Don't cry," she hissed at her reflection. "You're not allowed to cry."

And why should she cry? She had succeeded in her goal – keep Ren at an arm's length. Don't let him inside. Keep him away from the fragile heart of the matter. Keep her partnership – the only stable human relationship in her life at this point – from dissolving like so many iridescent soap bubbles. Keep him away from her, just on the off-chance that she would cling to him as a rebound off that idiot – because Tsuruga Ren deserved so, so, so much more.

This was for the best.

So why did it hurt so damn much?

 **-x-**

Why Lory Takarada was hell-bent on ruining his godson's life, Ren would never understand. As he watched the woman he cared for deeply – hell, maybe even _loved_ – slam the car door and storm away into the chilly autumn night, Ren sighed.

"It'll bring you two closer together," Ren repeated the Chief's words in a mocking tone as he slumped further into the sedan's driver seat. He watched Kyoko storm angrily down the street in the direction of the pre-arranged convenience store.

"Bullcrap."

Kyoko had somehow found out that Ren had gone behind her back to speak with the Chief about his concerns regarding the potential danger of the predicament his partner was placing herself in. All talk of a sting operation was only hypothetical and thus not very worrisome – until, of course, their serial killer suspect had actually responded to Kyoko's fake forum post.

Ren had to hand it to his partner. Her post would have been a heart-wrenching read if it had been true. Grew up without a father, abandoned by her mother, betrayed by the love of her life who had just been using her for the cash to fund his habit of cheating on her with busty escorts. Of course their suspect – and frighteningly, several other Tokyo-dwellers – had responded to her post.

After she had contacted the responder, a private message to her forum's account had indicated a meeting time and place in addition to a generous offer for Kyoko to decide the "mechanism of passing" as the message had delicately stated. And thus the sting operation was on.

But Ren had gone to Chief Takarada anyway to express his concerns. And somehow, Kyoko had found out, and against all his best intentions, she had immediately taken it the wrong way.

"You think I'm incompetent or something," Kyoko had raged at him.

"I don't," Ren had protested, trying to keep his voice from rising in volume inside the small plainclothes car. "I'm just concerned that you are being a bit cavalier–"

"Don't lie to me," she'd accused, her golden eyes flashing in the dimming light. "From the first day I set foot in the S.I.T., you picked on me. But after all this time, I thought you were… we were…"

In retrospect, Ren realized that the two detectives had been leaning toward each other, eyes locked but no longer in fury. He had murmured, eyes ghosting to her lips, "I was what…?"

"You don't really care," she had whispered, eyes wide in fear yet she continued to lean forward as their faces drew closer and closer with each passing second. "You pretend like you do, but you really don't."

At that moment, Ren had felt an urge – no, a _compulsion_ – to surge forward and show her just how much he cared. But a thrill of terrifying guilt in his heart had grounded him.

Abruptly Ren had sat back in his seat, mind reeling with thoughts of another partner back in America and blood on his hands that he never could really wash off.

That was when Kyoko had made her infuriated retreat out of the car.

Wiping a weary hand over his face, Ren sighed again. Way to go, Tsuruga.

Maybe the sting op was a necessary move, Ren admitted from the logical side of his brain. If Kotonami Kanae and Amamiya Chiori were still alive, then here was the perfect opportunity to catch their captor and eventual murderer. Here was a chance to save two lives.

But he was still upset with Kyoko for taking this risk. No, Ren mused. He was upset with her for being so damned gung-ho and eager to take this risk. It was almost as if she _wanted_ to put herself in the line of fire…

Ren frowned, trying to piece the puzzle together. Kyoko never talked about her family. She didn't keep any personal photos or items on her desk. And her recent hair change…

Ren's frown deepened. Aloud he mused, "Maybe the post wasn't so far from the truth…"

Suddenly over the line, Ren heard Kyoko's breathy voice.

"Wait. I think I heard something."

-x-

The sound – part sob, part exclamation – carried through the crisp autumn air. The auburn-haired "collegian," sitting on the park bench with a convenience store bag by her side, froze in the middle of blowing on her chilled hands. She had purposefully not brought a coat – because what kind of girl seriously contemplating the recently purchased pocket razor sitting on the bench next to her would be concerned about a little cold?

"Wait. I think I heard something," Kyoko muttered as secretively as she could into her jacket lapel. "Might have been a scream. I'm going to go check it out. Could've been just an animal."

"Mogami-san, do you need back up?" Ren asked over the headset, his voice sounding surprisingly urgent.

"No," she replied curtly. Among other things, she still felt bitter at him after their argument. "If he's here, I don't want to spook him."

Slowly, cautiously, trying to resist the temptation to reach into her waistband for her concealed weapon, Kyoko trotted forward into the grove of trees.

"Hello?" She called, trying to sound like a very frightened and unsure college student. She hoped that actually being a very frightened and unsure adult woman would suffice for acting.

 _Shasshh!_ Leaves rustled violently to the side, whipping her head to the left. A thick bush at the end of the path stirred and then was still. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

"Mogami-san, are you sure you don't need back-up?" She heard Ren ask from a far corner of her mind. "Mogami-san?"

The dark, waxy leaves of the bush gave nothing away as she approached. A bad feeling hung heavy in the pit of her stomach. As her hand reached forward to push the leaves away, she heard a small reminder in the back of her head – _"That's called your gut instinct, Mogami-san," Ren had told her one day. "Never ignore it."_

Swallowing the lump in her throat as well as her pride, she whispered, barely audible into the microphone, "Tsuruga-senpai, back up please."

Her hand pushed forward.

She saw the leg first. It was bruised and crusted with dried blood. Quicker and quicker, eyes darting in alarm up the rest of the body, Kyoko's hands and arms shoved back the rest of the bush's leaves, her arms getting scraped by its thorny branches.

Clothing that once were blue jeans and a gray t-shirt hung in tatters on the young woman's thin frame. Wavy brunette hair that may have once been stylish long, dyed layers now grew in raggedy tangles that looked as if they had been hacked off periodically with a knife.

Kyoko finally crashed through the brush, and came to realize two things at once, her voice was screaming into her jacket mic for back up, for medics, for help – and the other was that the young woman appeared unconscious.

'Or dead,' the small, fearful voice in her head whispered.

Terror driving her forward, Kyoko stumbled behind the rest of the bush, branches snapping shut behind her to form a thick barrier, and dropped to her knees beside the body. In her ear, half the Tokyo police force was yelling their positions, the location of the ambulance, a male voice was yelling that he was coming, but a singular focus consumed her mind.

Her trembling hand reached toward the girl's carotid… Her fingers brushed the flesh of the body's neck.

A pale, dirtied hand shot up to grab Kyoko's wrist in a deathly grip. Kyoko nearly screamed, but the woman turned and her eyes were so _haunted,_ and she was saying in a torrent of tripping, stumbling, mashed-up words, "He promised. He promised. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So sorry–!"

"What–?"

As if intuiting that they were short on time, the young bruised woman shot to sit up, her eyes crazed and wide – "He promised he'd let me go if I helped him."

Kyoko's mouth formed the word, "Wh–?"

"I'm sorry," the strange woman whimpered one last time.

Then there was a sudden pressure pain in Kyoko's upper arm. Cold. The detective saw the syringe, the needle, but for some reason, though her instincts were nearly screaming in fear, her mind seemed to lag a million miles behind. Run, run, run…away…

Run… Ren…

Tsuruga… senpai…?

Darkness.

 **-x-**

* * *

Dun-dun-du~n! Two cliffhangers in one month? (Sorry, all you folks coming over from Spy Beat! Haha) And just in case you didn't read the author's note in the beginning, this is indeed a two-shot.

Comments, faves, and alerts will be used to fuel my bazooka to blow away writer's block! And if you're hungry for even more Skip Beat goodness, don't forget to check out my other long-running series, **Spy Beat**.

Until next month!


	3. Things That Go Bump in the Night

Hello loyal readers,

Happy Spook-tober! I'm taking a break from The Shinigami (Detective AU) because I need to sort out some plot holes.

In the meantime, I wrote this whole one-shot in one sitting… at night… while alone in my apartment. It was a bad idea. "It'll be fine!" I thought. "It's from my own imagination anyway. None of this is real!" I thought.

I was seriously trying to hold my pee for hours because I didn't want to go to the bathroom alone. LOL And then I had to walk my dog at night… Alone… It was a very fast walk. I'm sorry, Murphy if your doggy bladder wasn't fully emptied.

(And sorry for the gags intermingled in this horror-themed fic. I can say they were meant to break up the scares to make it more palatable, but that'd be a lie. I've been watching way too much Gintama, and I now can't write anything without Sorachi-sensei gags interfering. Sigh…)

Enjoy and don't forget to check out my long-running series, **Spy Beat**!

 **-x-**

 **Things That Go Bump in the Night**

"Tsuruga-san. How… did it turn out like this?" Kyoko mumbled from her side of the bed.

"My apologies, Mogami-san…" Ren muttered from the other end, staring blankly at the cobweb-strewn ceiling above them. "I have no idea."

"Do you know where we are?"

"No idea. You?"

"Same."

"Mogami-san is being very… calm about all of this," The veteran actor mused as he rolled over to look at her. At his movement, a small puff of dust rose up from the sheets, which was a little more than concerning for a staunch clean-house advocate like Kyoko, however...

"Because…" The auburn-haired talent tore her eyes away from perusing the couch in the corner of the room. It was covered in a dustsheet that looked suspiciously like it could be hiding a dead body underneath. She rolled over and smiled, giving her senpai a 'V for victory sign' with her fingers. "This is all just some weird dream. I'm sure I'll wake up in no time!"

"Mogami-san. I'm very certain this is not a dream. I'm definitely awake."

"Oh…?" Kyoko's eyes flit to the end of the four-poster bed with its tattered, spider web-entangled draping.

"Ohhh…?" In the dim moonlight that crept in between the cracks from the rotting boards covering the windows, her eyes took in the sooty Victorian-era fireplace and the stern Englishman in the portrait above.

"Ohhh!" Strangely shaped statues that looked like eyes stared back at her from the dusty, cluttered shelves next to the bed.

"UWAHHHH!" Mogami Kyoko screamed the loudest as she noticed – as if for the first time – that she was sharing a bed with her respected-god-like-and-definitely-not-beloved Tsuruga-san. With a crash, she flailed out of bed and fell to the grimy wooden floor below.

It took Ren a few minutes to calm her down – definitely more than necessary because A) they had apparently been kidnapped and thrown into some deserted-looking creepy mansion, and B) they had been sharing a bed for who knew how long before they woke up! What if she'd done something indecent on accident while she was asleep! Thankfully both of them were still fully clothed!

Shaking her head furiously to dispel the bad thoughts, Kyoko tuned back into the conversation just in time to catch Ren offering her a hand to stand up off the floor.

"Neither of us know where we are," Ren was continuing his logical train of thought. Kyoko busied herself dusting off her jeans and trying to hide the blush that had erupted at the feel of Tsuruga-san's hand in hers. Her senpai put a thoughtful finger to his chin. "I can't seem to recall how I got here either. Can you?"

Kyoko shook her head and cast another wary glance at the rows of eye statues staring at her from the shelves next to the bed. "The last thing I remember was getting into your car with you… Yashiro-san had offered to drive Moko – er, I mean – Kotonami-san and me to TBM Studios because you had a job there later as well…"

An idea struck her, and she snapped her fingers. "Yashiro-san!" Rummaging around in her jean pockets, Kyoko attempted to find her –

"My cell phone is gone too," the dark-haired actor said with a frown as Kyoko wilted.

"W-What are we going to do, Tsuruga-san?" Strangling the urge to cling to him – for safety, just for safety! – Kyoko hugged herself instead, rubbing her hands on her upper arms to generate some warmth.

"We don't know who put us here, but they didn't exactly restrain us. We should probably try to escape as fast as possible," Ren mused. Ever resourceful, he began rummaging around in the creaky wooden wardrobe by his side of the bed. "It would be for the best if we could find something we can use for a weapon or a light source or –."

Following his lead, Kyoko had been about to walk the periphery of the room to look for supplies when Ren's sentence abruptly cut off. She glanced over her shoulder. "Tsuruga-san…?"

Ren was frozen with the wardrobe doors open. But as she approached from behind, he abruptly slammed them closed.

"What was it?" Kyoko reached for the door, curious.

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Startled, Kyoko glanced up. Ren's gentleman smile was out in full force, and Kyoko had to blink away spots from her vision at the abrupt change in lighting.

"I-I really don't recommend you look in that wardrobe, M-Mogami-san," Ren said smiling and tilting his head to the side.

Ren was stuttering. What the hell. Thoroughly creeped out by his weird behavior, Kyoko narrowed her eyes at him. "Well… Was there anything useful in there?"

"… Among other things…" He hazarded, his smile still plastered on his face. "Maybe candles?"

Deciding that her senpai was just trying to scare her in their currently creepy environment, Kyoko puffed her cheeks out. "Tsuruga-san, candles are exactly the type of thing we're looking for! Here, let me just–"

Kyoko brushed past her senior and opened the wardrobe door. There were three, long wax candles sitting at the bottom of the wardrobe. Kyoko grinned. "See? I don't know why you're being so strange– Wait."

As she grabbed the candles and straightened, Kyoko's gaze fell on the back of the wooden wardrobe. An old coat hung in the center, but noticing something behind it, she pushed the moth-eaten fabric aside.

Carved into the wood over and over and over again were little obsessive Japanese characters.

 _Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me._

The writings were jagged and uneven but covered the entire interior of the wardrobe, not missing a single centimeter. It looked as if someone had written it over and over again by clawing at the wood with their fingernails.

Kyoko screamed and leapt back. In her panic, she had jumped right into Ren, and the actor and actress toppled to the floor.

"Tsu-Tsu-Tsuruga-san!" Kyoko scrambled back, forgetting decorum in her panic. She grabbed Ren by the lapels of his jacket and shook him back and forth. "What is that?!"

"I don't know! I told you not to look!" Ren's sparkling façade dropped in his panic. He glanced back up at the wardrobe and then froze. Dreading what she would see but feeling compelled to look, Kyoko haltingly turned her head and followed his line of sight.

All the desperate scribblings were gone. Instead, carved in the back of the wardrobe was a single eye.

Ren scrambled to his feet, and as he examined the wood, ran his fingers over the surface. Behind him, Kyoko screeched, "Why would you touch it!"

Recoiling as if bitten, Ren looked at the wardrobe in horror. Not taking his eyes off it, he muttered, "It's really there. What the hell…"

As quick as she could, Kyoko leapt up and slammed the wardrobe doors closed then darted back around the hide behind Ren. "L-L-Let's just get out of here, Tsu-Tsuruga-s-san!"

The two backed out of the room – and though both noticed it, neither mentioned it aloud –that there was an eye messily carved into the center of their room's door.

Luckily, Ren had a lighter in his pocket – "A leftover from Heel-sama," he'd joked with a weak smile – and they lit up two of their candles. Kyoko held hers aloft, and swallowed hard. The weak, flickering light seemed to do nearly nothing to penetrate the inky blackness of the hallway before them. She waved it back and forth, taking in the crimson carpet that may have once looked regal except mold and decay had taken their toll. The walls of the hallway were lined with sconces for candles, but they were all empty. Hanging among the sconces was the occasional portrait frame. Stern Victorian-era British-looking gentlemen and women stared back at them, except –

"Tsuruga-san…" Kyoko whispered. She didn't know why she was whispering.

"I know," Ren replied thinly. "Their eyes have been…"

Gouged out. Repeatedly. Violently. As the eye-less pictures stared down at her, Kyoko tried to suppress a shiver as a chill ran down her spine. Her back suddenly felt very open and vulnerable. Above her, Ren glanced down.

"Mogami-san, here." The actor gently pushed her shoulder so he was standing behind her but also close enough so he could lead and leap in front should any danger present itself.

Hoping that the low light would hide her blush, Kyoko mumbled her thanks and gripped her candlestick with two hands so she wouldn't be tempted to do instinctive and regrettable things to Tsuruga-san if she were suddenly frightened.

"Let's go this way," Ren gestured with his candle to the left. "It seems like the other way is just a dead end."

"R-Right…" Kyoko began to walk down the hallway, feeling slightly comforted because Ren was right behind her.

The two walked slowly through the dark halls, trying to make as little noise as possible. They reached a couple of branches in the hallway, but Ren logically suggested going left each time because that was how one solved mazes. Kyoko swallowed dryly when he had first said it, because, truthfully, that was what this felt like. A maze to keep them trapped.

"How long do you think we've been walking?" The actress murmured, again clutching her shoulder with her unoccupied hand and rubbing up and down.

Above her, Ren shook his head. "I have no idea. My watch is…"

"Broken?" Kyoko finished for him. Ren stopped behind her. Sighing a little at her secretive senpai, Kyoko turned and gave him a small smile. "I noticed while we were playing Cain and Setsu. You don't have to tell me why you wear it–"

Noting Ren's concentrated frown, Kyoko tilted her head to the side. "Tsuru–?"

His hand flashed down to lightly rest over her mouth. Kyoko would have been embarrassed had she not noticed the look of alarm on the veteran actor's handsome face.

"The footsteps stopped," he hissed quietly.

Kyoko's frightened, "What?!" came out a muffled, "Wmmphf?!"

"Whenever we walk, they walk. When we stop, they stop," Ren whispered urgently.

Prying his hand from her mouth, Kyoko hissed back, "How long has he? – it? – they? – how long has _whatever_ been following us!"

"I just noticed it at the last hallway split," Ren muttered. Then he froze again. Turning her head, Kyoko strained her ears. She could hear a soft shuffling in the distance behind them. As if someone – or something! – were walking down the carpeted hall. Then the shuffling stopped. Kyoko was about to breathe a sigh of relief – but the shambling footsteps began again, faster this time! The sound was getting closer and closer by the second!

"Run!" Grabbing her hand, Ren took off at a full sprint down the hall. In her surprise and her desperation to keep up, Kyoko dropped her candle, and she looked back. She tried not to dwell on the image with which her brain was playing tricks on her. Paranoia, she told herself, it was just paranoia. There was no way that she actually saw what she thought she had. For as she watched over her shoulder at her candle falling to the floor, in the millisecond before the wick hit the carpet and snuffed out, she maybe might have seen a pair of pale, dirty legs in the dim light.

"No thank you, Imagination-chan!" Kyoko shrieked as she pumped her legs as fast as they would go. "I've been letting you run too wild for far too long, ah-ha-ha-ha! It's time to stop now, please!"

"What?" Ren yelled as Kyoko pulled up beside him, her increased effort and cardio from all that desperate bicycling to work making up for the leg-length discrepancy between the two. "Never mind! Just keep running – Ah!"

Kyoko felt the sharp yank on her hand as Ren tripped over something, and the pair of actors plummeted to the floor. Rolling over and over across the ground, the young man and woman finally slid to a stop.

Not feeling the cold entity of a vengeful spirit breathing down her neck, Kyoko dared to eek open her eyes.

Ren's grimacing face was inches from her own as he lay on top of her, his large hands cradling the back of her head. A remote 5% of Kyoko's mind mused at the irony that this was the second time that they had found themselves in such a position, because he had protected her from falling yet again. The other 95% of her brain nearly imploded at the close proximity.

"Ouch… That's going to bruise tomorrow," Ren groaned and slowly rose to his feet, grasping for his candle that lay nearby, miraculously still flickering despite the fall. He cast a wary glance down the hallway they'd come from. It was dark and silent. No footsteps.

"Tsuruga-san…" Kyoko rose shakily to her feet beside him, trying to fight the urge to cling to the sleeve of his jacket. She glanced around the room around them. It seemed to be a high-ceilinged antechamber of sorts connecting several hallways. Broken tile littered the ground around them. "What _was_ that?"

Ren was silent for a moment before swallowing harshly. "I have no idea, Mogami-san."

A pale hand snaked out of the darkness and landed on Ren's shoulder.

"KYAH!"

"AHH!"

"WHA—?"

"MOU!"

Ren stumbled back, waving his candle like a weapon at the new threat, except –

"Y-Y-Yashiro-san?" Kyoko yelped. She turned to the fourth person who had screamed. "Moko-san!"

Laughing nervously, Yashiro Yukihito rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, the dim candlelight reflecting off his glasses. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you two!"

"We just saw the light and…" Kanae paused in trying to pry Kyoko off her torso and looked pointedly at Ren. "Wait. You screamed back then, didn't you?"

Ren looked the tall actress dead in the eyes. "I did not."

'He definitely did,' Kyoko thought to herself. She could tell her cynical thought was shared among her other two companions. 'We all heard it.'

"Anyway," Ren coughed into his hand. "Why were you guys chasing us earlier? You could have just called out."

"Yeah, Moko-san~!" Kyoko clung to her friend, one-fourth out of typical affection, and three-fourths out of a desperate need to cling to _something_. "There was no need to be so shy! You really scared us back there~!"

"Chasing?" Kanae repeated, puzzled. She and Yashiro exchanged confused glances. "We saw you two getting up off the floor here and came out of that hallway to see."

Kanae pointed at another darkened entryway all the way across the room.

Breath hitching, Kyoko clung even tighter to her friend's arm. Yashiro's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? Something was chasing you two?"

"It's nothing…" Ren hazarded, glancing back at the opening he and Kyoko had come from. "Most likely…"

"More importantly," Kanae said, breaking the tense silence. She looked at the three other LME employees, eyes narrowed. "Why are we here? Did you guys bring us here?"

"What? No way!" Kyoko burst out. "Why would I bring my precious Moko-san to somewhere so creepy! Tsuruga-san and I can't even remember how we got here!"

"Then…" Yashiro rubbed his chin, frowning. "It's the same with us. I'm guessing the last thing we all remember is getting into Ren's car together?"

The other three nodded. Yashiro's frown deepened. He muttered something under his breath that sounded to Kyoko like, "I should have taken that curse fan mail seriously. I thought it was just a prank."

"C-C-Curse fan mail?!" Kyoko yelped, beginning to recite Buddhist exorcism prayers in her mind.

"Yeah," the manager continued, his voice dipping lower, "Three days ago, Ren got some weird envelope with his regular fan mail. All along the envelope, was written, 'Help me. Help me.'"

Ren and Kyoko exchanged alarmed glances.

Yashiro sighed, "But inside was just a piece of dirty paper that said, 'Three days.' And had a drawing of an eye–"

" _I_ don't want to hear any more!" The superstitious talent screeched and slapped her hands over her ears.

Beside her, Ren sighed and handed his candle to Yukihito, reaching into his pocket to light the last candle for himself. "Don't be ridiculous, Yashiro-san. Things like curses and ghosts don't exist."

"Then what is this?" Kyoko, who had heard her senpai past her hands over her ears, whirled around. "A shared hallucination? Mass hysteria? A dream? Ouch!"

Kanae had reached forward to pull sharply on the auburn-haired girl's cheek. As Kyoko pulled away and pouted, rubbing her cheek, the Number Two LoveMe girl deadpanned, "It's not a dream."

"Well, if this is for real – and it's not a curse – who would have done something like this?" Yashiro gestured to the decrepit house around them. "What kind of crazy madman would have kidnapped four people, and stuck them in some creepy, haunted-looking…"

The manager trailed off as the same thought entered all of their heads at once.

"The President," they all grumbled simultaneously.

Putting a hand to his mouth, Ren called out into the open air, "Very funny, President Takarada. Could you please let us out now?"

There was a pause of heavy silence. Then, as if in response, a loud boom of thunder rattled the boarded up windows around them, and a crackle of lightning lit up the room from outside. Kyoko didn't know how it happened, but she found herself clinging to Ren's sleeve. While the two laughed sheepishly and Kyoko tried to as gracefully as possible excuse herself, behind her, she heard Kanae say, "Yashiro-san…?"

At her friend's halting tone, Kyoko turned. Yukihito's face was pale in the flickering candlelight, his eyes wide in absolute terror, showing the whites all around. She watched as he raised a shaking hand to point to the darkened entryway to a hallway on their left.

"D-D-Did you see that?" The normally calm and collected manager whimpered. "Please. Somebody else tell me they saw that."

Feeling a pit forming in her gut, Kyoko peered down the hall, but all she could see was darkness. A fast creeping sensation ran down her spine.

From behind her, Ren asked, "What was it?"

"It… It looked like a man," Yukihito hissed. "But… he had no eyes…"

Kanae and Kyoko both yelped and moved to grab each other. Kanae snapped, her voice shaking, "Y-You better not just be trying to scare us, you glasses-wearing pretty-boy!"

While Yashiro was trying to decide whether to be offended or flattered, Ren sighed and raised his candle in the direction of the hallway. He called back over his shoulder, "It's probably just the President dressed up to scare us… Let's go."

And with that, Ren began striding purposefully toward the hall.

The other three just stared at his back in a moment of stunned silence, before Yashiro sprang forward, arms gesticulating wildly. "Wait, wait, wait. You want to go _toward_ the monster?"

"It's not a monster," the tall actor called out behind him. "It's the President. If you want, you can all wait here. I'll go alone–"

"No way, Ren! That's how people die in horror movies!"

"You know I don't really enjoy the horror genre, Yashiro-san."

"Well, _Tragic Marker_ ended up being pretty close to horror with the way _you_ played it…"

Finding themselves quickly in the center of the room without a shred of light, the two girls dashed forward, calling out for the men to wait for them.

The hallway was a lot shorter than the first one, Kyoko noted. There weren't any winding twists and turns, just a straight shot down a narrow corridor. The same picture frames and empty wall sconces decorated this hall as well. They went single-file: Ren, Kyoko, Kanae, and finally Yashiro.

The manager had whimpered a bit at being placed last, but after Kanae had convinced him with a brusque – "Are you a man, or what, Yukihito-san?" – said man had blushed and squared his shoulders.

Following Ren down the hall, Kyoko mused to herself, 'I've never heard Moko-san call Yashiro-san by his first name. I wonder what exactly happened to them while they were by themselves…'

"Oof!" Caught in her thoughts, Kyoko slammed into Ren's back as he had abruptly stopped. "Eep! My apologies Tsuruga-san!"

His back was warm. And strong. And – 'Stop it, Mogami Kyoko!'

Ren only turned and smiled gently, murmuring some low reassurance before turning back to the door before him. Peeking around him, Kyoko watched her senpai reach for the rusted doorknob and swallow hard. A flash of determination crossed his face, and he turned the knob. He gave the rotted wood of the door a hard push since the hinges seemed to have rusted, and it opened inward with a slow, ominous creak.

Into the blackness, Ren raised his candle.

"KYAH!" The two girls screamed in unison.

The deep and dark room was full of mannequins. All of the heads were turned – some at unnatural angles – to face the door. And each and every mannequin head had its eyes scratched off its plastic face.

Kyoko couldn't quite recall when she had leapt forward nor how she'd managed to grasp two handfuls of Ren's shirt. Under her fingertips, she could feel that her senpai – though collected and brave on the outside – had a heart hammering just as hard as hers. For some reason, that made her blush even harder.

Sheepishly relinquishing her fistfuls of fabric, Kyoko heard a small shuffle behind her. She turned just in time to see Kanae snatch her hands out of Yashiro's and give the Number One LoveMe girl an innocent smile.

Kyoko had no time to ask because suddenly her protective shield in front was gone, walking slowly into the room. With a yelp, the young actress instinctively scurried after Ren, trailing him like a shadow.

As he went, ducking under outstretched mannequin arms and wandering between the uneven rows of plastic figures, Ren began calling out, "President? President? Have you had your fun? Can we all go back to work now?"

Behind her, closer to the door, Kyoko heard Yashiro mutter, "It's fine, right? It's all fake after all. Just Show-Biz magic…"

Kanae gave a laugh – a tad too high-pitched to sound entirely convincing – "Y-Yeah, definitely. Nobody's going to be scared of a few dolls! It's like the set of a B-grade horror flick!"

The door slammed shut behind them. The gust of wind from the door promptly blew out both candles.

Both women screamed. Kyoko could hear Ren fumbling in his pocket for the lighter. In the dark, her skin felt tense, taut pulled across her bones, straining, like any second something would reach out and grab her. And EAT HER. And then–!

One flick. Two flicks. The lighter caught on the third flick of the wheel. Ren quickly relit the candle, but Kyoko paled.

"M-My apologies, Tsuruga-san. I have no recollection of how I got underneath your jacket."

Across the room, Kanae laughed genuinely, sounding glad at the sudden comic relief. "Likely story, Kyoko. Right, Yashiro-san?"

The dark-haired actress turned. "Eh? Yashiro-san...?"

Kyoko watched as her friend's hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide in unsuppressed terror. The place where Yashiro had been standing was now empty except for a pair of glasses on the floor. All the mannequin heads were turned toward the spot from where he had disappeared.

 _Creeaaaaaaak_. One by one, to their horror, the mannequin heads, their faces with painted smiles and scratched out eyes, began to slowly turn and face them. Kanae screamed.

That was the last coherent thought Kyoko had of the clambering, desperate, panicked escape from the room. She came to again, slamming the door behind her and helping Ren to hold it closed. They could hear and feel faint scraping from the other side of the door, as if weak, plastic hands were trying to find purchase on the door or the doorknob. Kanae came with a chair from the hallway, and Ren quickly propped it up underneath the knob. The three backed away slowly, warily. But the chair held, the door and the knob only quivering occasionally.

Breathing hard, Kyoko finally managed a faint, "What was that?"

She turned to the other two and swallowed hard, managing to shout louder, her voice pitching to become unhinged, "WHAT WAS THAT!"

"I-I don't know," Ren stammered, hands on his knees as he still caught his breath.

"Where's Yashiro?" Kanae demanded frantically. "Do you think he's back there–?"

Her eyes flicked to the door. Kyoko grabbed her friend's hand. "You can't go back in there."

"He got taken," the normally poised actress moaned. "The curse took him!"

While Kyoko was trying to calm Kanae down, she felt Ren's presence behind her, and he rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Stay calm you two. We have to get out of here. We'll get help, and we'll come back, and…"

Ren trailed off, but Kyoko could feel his hand squeezing her shoulder tighter and tighter. She glanced up. Her senpai's eyes were wide. Kyoko followed his line of sight down the hall.

There are black scribbles all over the walls – big, small, all of them crooked and appearing as if written by some unhinged, desperate maniac.

 _Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me._

Interspersed among the words were big, black drawings of eyes, traced over and over on the walls with an apparent obsessive devotion. And on the floor, the carpet was marred by more black markings, a trail of dark streaks, as if some great, demented child had used a black crayon to color back and forth a strip down the hall. It looked eerily to Kyoko like a trail of black blood where someone had dragged a body.

Beside her, Kanae was still shaking, gripping her head in her hands. "It's got to be the President. It has to be. Yashiro-san… Yashiro-san is…!"

"Moko-san, Tsuruga-san is right," Kyoko pleaded with her friend, not liking the crazed look in her eyes. "We have to get out of here, and we'll go get help! We can save Yashiro-san after we get help!"

Finally, but abruptly, Kanae stilled, her gaze still latched onto the floor. Slowly, slowly the dark-haired actress raised her head, her eyes tracking along the black drag-marks on the carpet. Kanae yelled, "It has to be the President. Where is he?"

Before Kyoko could stop her, Kanae had sprung up and dashed down the hall. "President Takarada! Come out RIGHT NOW!"

"Moko-san!" In a flash, Kyoko sprinted after her, and Ren followed. The hallway ended back in the antechamber, the black markings ending abruptly too. In the center of the tiled room, the Kyoko slowed to a halt, turning around and around.

Kotonami Kanae had vanished.

"Moko-san?" Kyoko called, unsure. Despair mounting, Kyoko cried out, "MOKO-SAN!"

"Mogami-san…" Ren reached down to the floor beside her and came back up, his hand shaking slightly, gripping a gray ballet flat. Kyoko blinked at the shoe. That was Moko-san's shoe…

"No… Moko-san…? MOKO-SAN!" Kyoko screamed again, despair cresting over her in waves. She found herself crouching on the floor, sobbing and cradling the shoe to her chest. Beside her, Ren was trying to shake her as she cried.

"We have to get out of here Mogami-san. I know you're scared…" He reached forward and wiped her tears away with a swipe of his thumb before bringing her in for a swift embrace. He held her and let her tuck her head under his chin and clutch the lapels of his jacket as she cried. "We have to go and get help. That's how we can help Yukihito and Kotonami-san."

Feeling her breathing shudder after her intense cry, Kyoko took a couple deep breaths, sniffled, and nodded shakily. "You're right, Tsuruga-san."

Taking her hand, Ren stood and pulled her up alongside him, holding the candle aloft in his other hand. Kyoko was about to thank him and let go, when he started forward, still clutching her hand like it was a lifeline. Despite the circumstances, Kyoko felt a pleasant blush tingle her ears.

Choosing the last, untraversed doorway out of the antechamber, the duo wandered into another maze of halls. Keeping with Ren's maze-winning strategy, they kept to the left, had to double back once or twice after hitting dead ends, but eventually, they turned a corner.

Lights! Kyoko felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Candles merrily lit in wall sconces accompanied them down the hallway, where at the end lay a large, intricately carved wooden double door.

"An exit, Mogami-san!" Ren said excitedly and squeezed her hand. Kyoko beamed up at him, and the two started forward, at first walking and then faster and faster until they were running.

Then the candles by the exit blew out. Confused but still in the light of the rest of the hallway, the two slowed their pace. The next two candles fizzled out. Ren and Kyoko came to a halt. The sound of their feet no longer impeding their hearing, Ren paused, frozen. "Footsteps…"

Kyoko heard the slow, shambling, dragging steps on the rotten carpet before she saw the dirty, bare feet and a flash of two pale, grotesque legs before the next set of lights went out. She had also seen its head.

"It has no eyes!" She screamed, unaware that she had done so.

An inhuman screech sounded from the darkness. The pairs of lights started to extinguish faster and faster, growing closer and closer, the footfalls growing faster and _louder_ and _hungrier_ with each step. Kyoko felt a jerk on her hand as Ren once again pulled her into a dead sprint down the hallway.

Kyoko had no idea how Ren knew where he was going, but he led them true, and soon enough the two had burst back into the antechamber, only their solitary flickering candle lighting the way. Another screech exploded behind them, sounding even closer than before. Ren stopped hesitating and picked a hallway. Kyoko ran and ran and ran, adrenaline spurring her on.

Finally, after a series of twists and turns, the two burst through a door out of the hall. Kyoko had a moment to note that it was the same room they'd woken up in. Slamming the door shut, Ren leaned against it, scrambling with the deadbolt lock above the knob. Not a moment too soon. As soon as Ren slipped the lock into the door, there was a fierce banging from the other side. As she ran around the room, Kyoko listened to the rotted wood creak and groan at the strain.

"Find something to barricade the door with!" Ren shouted out, already trying to haul the sheet-covered sofa from the far end of the room. Desperately, Kyoko tugged at the shelf by the bed, but –

"I'm trying! But everything's bolted to the floor!"

Ren and Kyoko tried a few more furniture items. They were all immovable. The banging continued, growing in ferocity. Another deafening, animalistic screech echoed from through the doorway. There was a splintering sound as the door partially gave.

Seeing it was a lost cause, Ren grabbed Kyoko by the wrist and dragged her to the far corner of the room. Kyoko understood immediately and dove under the dusty white sheet covering the sofa. Praying that there wasn't already someone or something underneath the long couch, she was surprised to find that it was very roomy underneath. Quickly, she scooted over on the carpet and Ren joined her. The two lay shoulder to shoulder, breathing heavily. The white sheet fluttered down to cover them in complete darkness, their solitary candle long-since dropped and forgotten.

Kyoko listened to the pounding on the door and felt Ren's strong arm loop around her back, pulling her tight so that none of her appendages were sticking out under the sheet. Adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream, Ren's arm around her waist was warm and comforting, and despite, or maybe because of, the fact that Mogami Kyoko was sure she was going to die very shortly and become a cursed spirit, the words flew out of her mouth.

"Tsuruga-san, I never got a chance to tell you – but I'm in love with you."

She froze. But her mouth was still running, now in instant regret, "And I'm sorry that's the last thing that you had to listen to while on this mortal plane! What a disrespectful and selfish kouhai I am! I'm sure you would've much rather – _MMPH_!"

Ren stopped her rambling with a forceful kiss. Her lips were open in surprise, and the man beside her shifted his weight so he was lying on his side and could have a better angle to press his soft lips insistently to hers. A smooth brush of his tongue against her mouth was the last thing she felt before he slowly pulled away.

She couldn't remember when, but Ren had brought his other hand up to cradle her face. He brushed a calloused thumb over her cheek and grinned at her shocked expression. He whispered, "I'm just glad I got to do that before the end."

Kyoko cut him off with another kiss.

 **-x-**

 **\- In a control booth somewhere nearby -**

"YES!" President Takarada pumped his fist in the air victoriously, eyes streaming tears of joy. He and Yashiro, who was sitting nearby also dabbing his eyes, embraced each other in a celebratory hug. Behind them, Kanae walked off to the side and dipped a tea bag into a cup of hot water from the refreshments table.

"My goodness, have some dignity you two," the proud actress said with a snort. However, as she turned back to the CCTV feed, which showed Ren and Kyoko kissing under the dusty sofa no longer aware that there was no more monster pounding at their door, she allowed herself a small, sweet smile.

"Finally… Mou…"

 **-x-**

By the way… Ruto (Takarada's assistant) was dressed up as the monster chasing them around. LOL

Thanks again for reading and **please don't forget to leave a review or fave or alert**! See you next month or on my other fic, **Spy Beat**!


	4. Cabin Fever

Hello loyal readers!

I'm sorry for being AWOL for so long. Life around the holidays has been insane. Lots of work and lots of family obligations. I'm running off to work as I type this, so forgive the short author's note! I'll update with Japanese notes and a Mailbox segment at the end!

Love you all!

 **-x-**

 **Cabin Fever**

 **Monday**

"Good morning, miss," the tall, dark-haired, and handsome man standing in Mogami Kyoko's doorway offered with a sparkling smile. "Would you perhaps have just a moment–?"

Kyoko's hand flew up immediately to stop him. The man's words died on his lips as she whipped her head around and stared at the small magazine cutout on the living room wall – the photo on the ripped page was covered in black pen graffiti – before whirling back around to glare at the stranger.

"There is absolutely no way," the dark-haired girl muttered, peering up at him with narrowed eyes, "That Tsuruga Ren, number one actor in all of Japan, is knocking on my door at 7 in the morning with an opening line that sounds like some shady newspaper salesman… I'm definitely hallucinating or something."

Shaking her head and vowing to never fall asleep in front of the television again, Kyoko began to close the door. However, a stiff hand slammed into the wood, preventing it from shutting.

Alarmed that her visual and auditory hallucination was apparently tangible enough to stop a door, Kyoko's head snapped up.

The man – who was undoubtedly Tsuruga Ren, because who else could produce such an intensely sparkling smile identical to the one seen on every nighttime talk show and billboard in Tokyo – slowly glanced behind the petrified young woman to the poster on the wall bearing his image (in addition to devil horns and a scrawled "Enemy #1!" underneath). As his head turned back to look down at her, his smile not faltering, Kyoko felt not a thrill of attraction or an overwhelming urge to swoon.

Instead, like a rabbit petrified in the gaze of a calculating hawk, she felt an ominous chill freeze her in place.

As if removed from her body, Kyoko watched with wide, fearful eyes as Tsuruga Ren turned his foreboding, flashy smile down at her and said a simple, "You'll do for now," before he swung open the door, stepped briskly inside, and closed the door behind him.

Before she could shake the dread that had sealed her lips and could demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing, the dark-haired woman paused. Down the hall of her apartment complex, she began hearing faint shouts and footfalls. The sounds kept growing and crescendoing in volume and number until there must have been a veritable sea of women on the other side of the door, running up and down the halls of the Tokyo apartment complex. All of them were screaming Ren's name.

"Tsuruga Ren~!"

"Where did you go, Ren-sama?"

"Come back, Ren! Don't be afraid!"

"I just want to TOUCH YOU, REN!"

Slowly, fearfully, Kyoko turned to look at Japan's number one actor. The man had in the meantime brushed past her and – smiling even more brilliantly than before – was slowly backing away from the door. Her eyes wide in horror, Kyoko turned to the front door and locked it.

 **-x-**

"This is Ketsuno Ana reporting from [Redacted] Apartment Complex in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo." The news reporter raised her microphone and continued shouting into it over the sound of what appeared to be hundreds of women and girls screaming at the tops of their feminine lungs.

"Chaos erupted here this Monday morning following what eye witnesses are deeming a fan-mobbing of Japan's Number One Actor, Tsuruga Ren."

Kyoko watched the television raptly as the video feed switched to that of a CCTV security camera that looked like it was taken from the front of a fancy restaurant. Lines of fans were spread between the entrance of the restaurant and an open driveway. A fancy sports car pulled up, and a young, brown-haired man with glasses got out first from the passenger's side. The fans hardly reacted until the driver's door opened and a tall, familiar head of dark hair emerged.

At first, there was just one girl clambering past the security barrier with the restaurant's security guards running to stop her. Then there were two, then four, then ten – and just like that, Kyoko watched Tsuruga Ren fleeing from the mob of young women off-frame of the camera.

"It's like a zombie movie," Kyoko muttered in horrified fascination as she tied a scrunchie around her long black hair in preparation for work.

"Please refrain from referring to my fans as zombies, miss," the actor intoned politely behind her as he continued to dial numbers on his cell phone.

On the TV, the news reporter continued. "Police have managed to clear the building of Tsuruga Ren's fans; however they have been unsuccessful in their attempts to disperse the crowd in front of the apartment complex."

To prove the reporter's point, Kyoko crouched low and flicked up the bottom corner of one of the window blinds. She quickly let the blind fall back into place. No matter what the polite Tsuruga Ren wanted her to think about his fans, the crowd – which appeared alarmingly enough to be growing in size instead of shrinking – looked like a massive, ravenous, flesh-seeking horde.

"The famous actor has yet to reappear from the building," Kestuno Ana continued grimly on screen, "And so far, there has been no sign of activity from LME to retrieve their most popular star."

As if answering the news reporter, Ren noted brightly as he raised his phone to his ear, "That will change soon enough."

Standing off to the side, Kyoko crossed her arms over her chest and waited, trying not to glance at the other poster on her wall – a life-sized reproduction of a certain blonde rockstar. If that gaggle of girls was outside, then there was no way _he_ would be able to come home tonight… Well, even if he had been planning to come home tonight… but that was beside the point–!

"Hello? President?" Ren was saying, that creepy smile still affixed to his face. As Kyoko gathered the rest of her Moz Burger uniform, she couldn't help but turn her ear and hear over the speaker as the person on the other end – LME's president, Kyoko assumed – replied.

"Ren! Thank goodness you're alright!" An older gentleman declared dramatically on the other end. "I was about to send out a search party!"

"That won't be necessary," the actor responded with a tight laugh. "Just security and a car will be fine."

"How did you get out of there? Yashiro-kun said you were surrounded. He said it looked like a zombie film or something–"

"I'm still in the apartment complex," Ren interrupted, his smile still plastered on his face. "I was rescued by a nice young woman who was kind enough to offer me a place to stay–"

His unwilling hostess snorted ungracefully before ducking her head to hide from the radiant and clearly threatening smile the actor shot in her direction.

Ren continued, "She's allowing me to remain in her apartment until you can–"

"Wait. How old is she?"

The dark-haired actor stopped abruptly, his smile fading just a smidge. Kyoko figured that on any other face, Ren's expression would have read as a confused frown.

"Sorry…? I don't see how that could possibly be relevant–"

"I said," the president repeated impatiently, "how old is this young woman?"

Turning to her abruptly, Ren hardly seemed to notice as Kyoko backpedaled and tried to appear as if she weren't eavesdropping. He cupped a hand over the receiver of his cellphone and asked politely, "Please pardon the imprudent, nonsensical, and potentially offensive question, but… how old are you?"

"E-Eighteen…" The dark-haired young woman hazarded as she cast a suspicious glance at him.

Ren reported this answer back into the phone. To which the responding question was, "Is she nice?"

After a cursory glance at her, Ren – still smiling – muttered a succinct, "More or less."

Kyoko bristled but had little time to retort before the LME President quickly followed up with, "And is she cute?"

Amid her desperate attempts to hide her own flushed face, Kyoko hardly noticed the minute blush that dusted her strange guest's cheeks and the momentary drop in his smile-mask that was immediately replaced as he muttered some very choice protests into the phone receiver.

The voice on the end simply mused, "Mmmmm…. So she is cute."

His smile back up and running on overdrive, Ren couldn't or wouldn't and didn't respond. Protecting her eyes from the brightness and her heart for fear of the man's poorly hidden bloodlust, Kyoko winced away.

On the other end of the phone, there was a sound like a deep, dark chuckle that suddenly turned into some light coughing as if the offender had just caught himself before devolving into a fit of maniacal laughter. Recovering a bit, the President sighed heavily and stated with the drama of a well-practiced but not very good liar, "My deepest apologies, Ren. All the cars and LME security officers seem to be busy at the moment."

"When are they going to become available–?"

"Oh, that'll take at least a few days," the older man drawled with thick and obvious regret. Kyoko's heart fell.

Ren quickly interjected, "Well, Yashiro-san can just–"

"And Yashiro-kun is… off running an errand for me in the Serengeti. He won't be home for at least a week–"

"President!" Ren's aggravated tone shifted back into strained politeness after the actor stole a glance at the dread-filled waitress. "You can't possibly expect me to stay trapped here–"

There was a crackling sound over the other end of the phone that to Kyoko sounded suspiciously like a candy wrapper being crinkled against the receiver.

The President was calling out, "Ren? Oh, Ren~! I can't seem to hear you anymore! The line must be dropping!"

"Pres–!"

As Ren was met with the extended, mocking sound of silence, the actor and waitress shared a sidelong, uncertain look. Finally, Ren sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. He shot Kyoko an apologetic smile – a real smile, she noted.

"I'm very sorry about this, miss. I've been so terribly rude," the actor murmured, brown eyes finding hers. "But would it be alright with you if I stayed a little while longer?"

It actually wasn't alright with Kyoko. Due to her own connections, this man was her natural enemy. However as she thought about the crowd of ravenous girls screaming outside her apartment building and the contrite, wide-eyed look on Ren's face, she couldn't help but cave.

With a large sigh, the waitress grumbled, "Yeah, that's fine."

A small, relieved chuckle escaped the actor's lips, and he dipped his head in a bow. "I suppose I never got your name…Mine is Tsuruga Ren."

Past her displeasure, Kyoko couldn't stop the corners of her mouth dipping down in a suppressed grin at the absurdity of someone famous like Ren having to introduce himself. She answered with a polite bow.

"I'm Mogami Kyoko. It's nice to meet you."

 **-x-**

Before the girl – Kyoko, she'd said her name was – headed to work, she had a few hastily invented "house rules" for her unexpected guest.

One: Don't open the window blinds. Two: Don't go into her bedroom – or the other bedroom. Three: Don't eat the pudding in the fridge.

Fortunately, Ren had no desire to break any of the rules, and he spent his first day in the odd young woman's apartment attempting to contact Yashiro (unsuccessfully), checking his fan blogs to see if the crowds outside had died down yet (they hadn't), and reading through a script he'd luckily tucked into his sport coat's inner pocket before arriving at the restaurant.

Overall, it was a small but comfortable and clean apartment, and Ren found that he didn't mind sitting on the worn floor cushions at the low coffee table and translating his way through the script, for once without any distractions or interruptions.

On one of his mental breaks, Ren was returning from a short trip to the restroom when he passed by the other bedroom. He paused by the door, listening. As he expected, there were no sounds inside. No one had entered or exited since this morning. Maybe Kyoko's apartment mate – family or friend – worked the early morning shift and had left before he arrived.

With a small shrug, Ren moved back to the living room. Examining the decor, he glossed over the large, life-sized poster of some bleached-blonde visual kei singer – really a dime a dozen nowadays in the entertainment industry – but the actor paused to examine the small poster of himself taped to the wall. Kyoko, he assumed, had scribbled devil horns, an eye patch, and blacked-out teeth onto the poster along with words like, "Enemy #1!", "Defeat him!", and "You can do it!"

Frowning a bit, Ren leaned away from the poster. Before Kyoko, he'd never really met a _woman_ who treated him like a tub of overripe natto – scornful with a bit of scared revulsion. He wondered what had happened to cause her to consider him in such a negative light.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Ren turned to peruse Kyoko's entertainment station – just a small TV and an old, probably secondhand multimedia player. Sorting through her mostly fantasy-themed movies and finding an old classic that he liked to study for the supporting actor's emotionally raw performance, Ren popped the DVD into the player and settled into the couch to watch.

Hours later, when it had long grown dark and Ren was just putting the finishing touches on his translation, he heard a key turn in the lock and the doorknob jiggle.

On instinct, mind reaching back to days long past when his father had forced him to use Japanese greetings at home, Ren called out from the living room, " _Welcome back_!"

There came a startled yelp and the sound of plastic grocery bags hitting the floor. Ren trotted over to the entryway and peered down the hall. Hair askew and uniform akimbo, Kyoko was frantically trying to gather groceries off the ground.

"My apologies," Ren said as he reached for a jar of pickled radish that had rolled his way. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Kyoko glanced up at him and rubbed her head sheepishly, babbling, "I'm sorry too! That was rude of me. I should have said, ' _I'm back_!' I used to say it all the time out of habit, but more often than not, I ended up just saying it to an empty room, so nowadays I…"

The dark-haired young woman trailed off, her eyes growing distant. As if suddenly remembering who she was talking to, her mouth snapped shut and instead of finishing, she just hurriedly picked up her food items, kicked her shoes off at the door, and strode to the kitchen.

"I was meaning to ask you," Ren inquired, following after her, still holding the jar of radishes. "Your family won't mind me staying here, will they?"

As he set the jar down on the countertop, he watched her eyes turn down as she clutched a packet of flour tightly, then as if catching herself, her sad smile brightened instantly. She hastily stuffed the flour into a cupboard. "Don't worry!"

Ren couldn't help but worry as he noticed the too-tight lines at the corners of her lips. It was definitely a fake smile.

"I don't live with my family," Kyoko was continuing to chatter brightly. "Just a… a friend."

"So…" The actor hesitated. "Will your friend mind if I stay?"

As she opened the fridge, Kyoko seemed to stare at the two cups of pudding sitting alone on the top shelf. The sad smile faded back in. "No… My friend doesn't come home very often."

All Ren could do was give a small sound of neutral understanding. It felt too personal a topic for him to touch.

Suddenly, Kyoko whirled around, her amber eyes bright, if not a bit too moist. "So! Have you eaten dinner yet?"

Unable to stop himself, Ren laughed. "Yes, I snuck out past all my fans to get food and then snuck back to return here."

Puffing her cheeks out in a pout at his joking, Kyoko muttered, "Well it's not like you could have gone all day without any food, so you must've found some way to get lunch, or–"

The strange young woman paused, frozen, and Ren was tempted to wave a hand in her face. Then she abruptly unfroze and looked up at him, eyes wide in horror.

"You… did eat breakfast at least at that restaurant before the crazy zombies chased you away… Right?"

Hemming and hawing, Ren looked to the side. With a winning smile, he finally settled on an ambiguous, "I don't eat much anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Judging by Kyoko's reaction, it was clearly the wrong thing to say.

Ren had never seen someone simultaneously launch into a long-winded lecture on the importance of macro and micronutrients, gather ingredients in a whirlwind of activity, and begin chopping vegetables with the gusto of a sous chef during dinner rush.

Feeling uncomfortable standing alone while his reluctant hostess worked, Ren offered to help. With narrowed eyes that clearly and silently questioned whether celebrities were actually capable of commoner activities like cooking, Kyoko begrudgingly delegated making the miso soup to the actor.

When Ren somehow managed to overcome physics and chemistry and burned _that_ to a crisp, the waitress angrily exiled him to a corner of the room, out of her way.

Finally half an hour later, like a tropical storm clearing out, Kyoko set the last dish on her small coffee table by the TV, smiling and wiping the sweat from her brow. Ren was impressed that with only a few ingredients in the kitchen, she had managed to make a delicious, nutritious, and light meal.

"Sorry it's not fancy caviar and steak, like you probably eat every day, Mr. Superstar," Kyoko announced as she settled onto a floor cushion and scooped some rice into his bowl with a wooden paddle.

"Actually," Ren noted as he took a small bite of the boiled vegetables from the side dish, "This is perfect."

Apparently trying to hide her pleased blush at the compliment, Kyoko mumbled into her own rice. "Well you said you don't eat much, so I just figured this would be to your liking…"

As the two continued to eat in a silence that was either strained or companionable – Ren couldn't decide – the actor gazed around the living room, his eyes landing again on the large poster on the wall.

"Who's that?"

For the second time in a single night, Ren realized he'd stepped on one of Mogami Kyoko's landmines.

"'Who's _that_?'" Kyoko repeated, mortified. "' _Who's that!'_ You don't know who Fuwa Sho is?!"

The strange, dark-haired girl launched into what was essentially a well-practiced monologue on how great Fuwa Sho was – handsome, cool, and a great singer – and how Sho was going to replace him, Tsuruga Ren, as the top man in Show Biz. Eventually, after several minutes, Kyoko wound down, glancing at the clock before looking at the poster again, her expression curiously sad.

Trying to think of something to cheer her up, Ren mused, "Well, if all of Fuwa Sho's fans are as dedicated as you, he should have no problem reaching the top."

"Yeah!" Kyoko brightened, and unbidden, heaped a generous second portion of rice into his bowl, not seeming to notice the look of dread Ren was giving her. "So, you better watch out and eat more, Japan's Number One Bachelor! You're going to need your energy to beat him!"

That night, as Ren bid his hostess goodnight and settled into the futon she'd set up for him in the living room, he curled up on his side and had one final fleeting thought before sleep claimed him.

If someone like Mogami Kyoko was his fan, Fuwa Sho was a lucky guy.

 **-x-**

 **Tuesday**

Rusty, Kyoko decided. Her Japanese home-greetings were rusty.

Or maybe it was because, for once, _she_ was the one leaving and returning home, and _someone else_ was there to see her off and welcome her back. Still, regardless of the reason, as she rung up customers at Moz Burger and waited tables at the Darumaya, Kyoko continued to replay in her mind the morning memory of Ren telling her, " _Have a safe trip_ ," and her haltingly tongue-tied, " _I-I'm heading o-out_."

On the bike ride home and as she waded through the sea of Tsuruga Ren fangirls holding vigil and biding their time outside her apartment, Kyoko practiced in her mind.

'I'm home' – No, too plain – 'I'm HOOOOME!' – Too obnoxious – 'I'm ho~me!' – Too sultry!

Sighing wearily in the elevator as she tucked her ID card back into her wallet after having shown it to both the police officer at the door and the doorman of the apartment, Kyoko shifted the grocery bags in her hands and squared her shoulders.

She was ready!

Unlocking the door, Kyoko cleared her throat and announced, "I'm ho– AHH!"

Her house looked like a laundromat. Drying uniforms and work kimonos hung on clotheslines strung across the apartment. Her ironing board was out, and neat rows of hangers with cleanly pressed uniform shirts and skirts hung on the attached railing.

Like making her way through a foreign jungle, Kyoko entered her apartment cautiously, picking her way through the hanging clothing items. Had Tsuruga Ren actually done her laundry for her?

More bafflingly: someone of Tsuruga Ren's status actually knew how to do household chores?

As if answering her question, a head of dark hair popped out of the bathroom door. For a superstar who had his sleeves rolled up while holding a toilet cleaning brush, Ren looked boyishly pleased.

"Oh! Mogami-san, I didn't hear you come in."

Kyoko caught herself staring and turned her head to the side to cough into her hand, embarrassed.

"I-I'm home," she mumbled.

"Welcome back!" Came the cheery reply. "I hope you don't mind, but I noticed the pile of uniforms in the bathroom hamper and decided that I couldn't possibly continue to stay in your apartment without _some_ form of payment."

Kyoko's houseguest waved away her protests and treated her to a genuine smile – this one tinged with something like… sadness. But his voice was light as he commented, "It's honestly the least I could do to help. A two-bedroom apartment in Roppongi Hills must… keep you busy."

Unable to refute his deduction, Kyoko just stood there, tongue-tied. He had to have seen how many different uniforms she owned, just based on her laundry. Therefore, he also must have known that she was currently holding down four minimum wage jobs just to keep up with the rent.

Fortunately for her, he was too polite to point this out directly.

"Well, the nighttime view is definitely worth the rent," Kyoko deflected nonchalantly, choosing to hide her expression by shuffling around in her shopping bags. "But it's not so bad that I couldn't pick you up some spare toiletries on the way home."

This time it was Kyoko waving off Ren's useless protests as she handed him some toothpaste, soap, a toothbrush, and a cheap phone charger before moving to the kitchen to start dinner. As Kyoko was pulling ingredients out of the fridge, she paused. The two pudding cups were still sitting on the top shelf. With a silent sigh, the young woman closed the door.

The two ate dinner over friendly conversation, and halfway through, Kyoko abruptly realized that she hadn't had this much fun – let alone this much human interaction with someone who wasn't a customer – in days if not weeks. Her laughter dimmed as her gaze flicked over to the poster on the wall. Kyoko sighed and shook her head to clear her mind.

"What's wrong?"

"Ah – I –" Caught in the middle of her thoughts and quite unsure how to respond to the concerned actor, Kyoko scrambled for a conversation topic. "I… was just worried that since you were trapped here, you might be falling behind on your work."

Ren sat back with a sigh as his chopsticks played with his rice. "I'm sure that since the President – the LME agency's president, that is – has ensured I'm indefinitely stranded here, he would have made arrangements with my manager and various project directors to account for my absence."

"But you're still worried that you're being unprofessional and delaying the projects," Kyoko finished in a thoughtful voice, watching Ren's surprised reaction as a confirmation of her suspicions. She grinned across the table at him. "I just assumed that as Japan's Number One Actor, you have to be something of a workaholic."

Ren grinned back, boyishly. "Well, in that regard, you and I seem to be very similar, Mogami-san."

To hide her growing blush and to shake the sense that her response was something akin to a betrayal, Kyoko abruptly rose from her seat to collect their dinner dishes and hurried to the kitchen. By the time Kyoko had finished cleaning the kitchen and destroying any errant thoughts from her wayward heart, Ren was sitting on the couch reading through a thick packet of papers.

"A script?" She questioned as she set two cups of green tea down on the coffee table.

Ren nodded his thanks and said, "Do you mind if I practice? I shouldn't make too much noise."

Unwilling to admit that she was intrigued, Kyoko shook her head and attempted to appear immersed in a fantasy novel that she'd started just before her unexpected guest has joined her two mornings ago. The beginning of the story wasn't very exciting, and she caught herself peeking over the top of the book to stare at Ren.

The handsome actor was reading silently, his mouth moving just the slightest bit to form the words. Every so often, his face would change emotions so completely that Kyoko found herself fascinated just by the many subtle hints at subtext and character shown in his every facial movement.

Then Ren glanced up at her, and Kyoko felt her face explode into a full-fledged blush. As she heard the actor's deep chuckle across the living room, she knew her attempt to hide her face behind the book was an utter failure.

"Sorry," Ren apologized with a smile. "I probably look pretty odd, practicing without a partner."

Her book flying down, Kyoko shook her head vehemently. "No! It was–!"

Feeling of discordant betrayal back, she bit her tongue, unwilling to finish her compliment. Instead she turned her head to the side and muttered, "It wasn't odd at all."

The actor just treated her to another sheepish grin and was about to resume reading when the words shot out of her mouth, "Would you like me to read the other person's lines?"

At first Ren's eyes widened in surprise, and Kyoko was about to take back her hasty words – because there was no way an amateur practicing with Tsuruga Ren was going to be less bothersome than him practicing alone– but then the actor's expression brightened, and he thanked her so profusely, she couldn't take it back at all.

As he handed her the script – since, he explained, he had practically memorized all of it earlier that day anyway – and described the gist of the scene and her character, Ren reassured her not to mind him too much.

"Just read like you normally would," he encouraged her.

Initially self-conscious, Kyoko started out reading the script awkwardly. The last time she had read dialogue aloud like this was her last year of Japanese literature in high school just before graduation. However, as the scene progressed, the characters becoming more real, the emotions and motivations becoming more obvious, Kyoko found herself immersed. Surprisingly, she began really enjoying herself.

And if she were to be so arrogant, Kyoko reckoned that Ren seemed to be enjoying himself as well. At least, if his enthusiasm launching into the next set of lines was any indication.

Taking the defensive in an argument with his childhood friend, Ren as Matsumoto Kei, the brilliant but hot-headed detective, snapped, "I left you behind for a reason, Misaki! It was too dangerous for you to be involved with someone like me–"

"Kei-kun is lying," Ishida Misaki threw back with a sweep of her hand, eyes threatening to spill tears in the heavy Tokyo downpour. "You were – you are – just being selfish. Same as always!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I gave up everything for you!" The young woman accused, "I worked so hard – just for you. And all you did was walk away without even a thank you! Now you're just making excuses–"

Frowning, Kei stepped forward, grabbing Misaki's hand as she tried to slap him. "Misaki…"

"No!" Misaki gasped and tried to wrench her hand away, but Kei clung on too tightly. She looked up at him, helplessly, desperately. "Kei-kun never realized it, but… I did all of those things because… I loved you…"

A hesitant hand was reaching up to her face to gently wipe away the tears that had fallen from her eyes as Kyoko continued, her voice breaking, "You just used me… and left me behind when I was no longer useful… and…"

"Mogami-san…"

Kyoko startled, the spell broken. Dark eyes intense, Ren stared down at her, one hand resting lightly on her cheek to brush away the tears that were cascading down and the other hand grasping hers tightly as if afraid she would run away.

Breath hitching, Kyoko unconsciously stole a glance at the poster of the blonde rocker on the wall, and she felt a wave of panic as she noticed Ren follow her gaze.

Trying to stave off any suspicion from the abnormally sharp actor, Kyoko hastily swiped at her eyes and stepped back from his hands. Her skin tingled where he had touched her. "S-Sorry… I didn't know that I was going to get so e-emotional…"

His hands hanging in the air awkwardly for a moment before dropping, Ren regarded her with a concerned frown. "Mogami-san…"

Hiccupping and feeling increasingly heartsick, the waitress offered the script back to the actor with a rustle of crinkled papers. "Sorry… I… I think I'm a little tired. I-I'm going to get ready for bed."

Her heart a rock in her gut, she turned to her room.

"Mogami-san…"

At her name, Kyoko looked back, unsure. As if at a loss for words, Ren paused for an unusually long amount of time before smiling sadly across the living room at her and saying gently, "Thank you for practicing with me. I really enjoyed it."

Unable to stop the small, shy smile from forming on her lips, Kyoko replied softly, "Thank you too, Tsuruga-san… I really… enjoyed myself as well."

As she reached the doorway of her room, Ren called out again suddenly, "Mogami-san!"

At his insistent tone, Kyoko turned back, eyes wide and questioning. Hand coming up to card through his dark hair, Ren looked down as if embarrassed at his outburst and murmured to the floor, "I know… you work hard, and I appreciate that. I appreciate you."

Her heart somehow instantly lighter, the smile on Kyoko's lips broadened before she wished a goodnight to her strange houseguest. As she closed the door softly, she heard him respond with a gentle, "Goodnight, Mogami-san."

For the first time in a long time, Kyoko felt warm and safe and not entirely alone going to sleep.

 **-x-**

 **Wednesday**

The next day as he tapped send, Ren hoped that the email message to Kyoko didn't sound too bizarre. In fact, he had a moment of uncertain panic where he wished he could take it back and re-read it, edit it, and then re-send it. It was just a request for her to purchase certain ingredients before coming home – chicken, onions, ketchup – but for some reason, he ended up nervously checking his phone every few minutes for a whole hour until she finally responded with a curious, "Sure! What do you want me to make for dinner tonight?"

After much deliberation and over half a dozen discarded rough drafts, Ren simply responded with a smiley face.

The rest of the day was spent fine-tuning his script memorization, posting anonymously on his fan sites advising the women still outside the apartment complex that maybe they ought to disperse, and doing research on his phone about an upcoming LME project.

Around early evening, he got a short text mail from Kyoko letting him know that her late-night job had unexpectedly cancelled her shift and that she was going to come home a little earlier than usual.

Finally, around 7, his hostess burst through the front door of the apartment, her uniform slightly more rumpled than usual. Ren watched her curiously from the kitchen where he had just finished making a pot of rice (yes, even _he_ could operate an electric rice cooker, thank-you-very-much) as she immediately slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. Her dark hair in disarray, half inside its braid and half falling out, the waitress leaned up against the door and let out a long, beleaguered sigh.

She met Ren's inquisitive look with a withering stare. As she brought the grocery bags into the kitchen, Kyoko muttered with the bitter fatigue of a soldier fresh from the front lines, "Tsuruga-san, your adoring fans are getting a bit rowdy out there."

"Sorry about that…" The actor gave her an apologetic wince and bent down to help her with the grocery bags. Nearing, he leaned in to examine her face. "Did they hurt you at all?"

As if extremely self-conscious at his sudden closeness, Kyoko reeled back, almost dropping the flat of chicken she was holding. Her face aflame, she seemed to be able to look everywhere but his face and mumbled that no, she hadn't been harmed, just jostled a bit.

Even though Ren knew that he ought to be more upset at his unruly fanbase, he couldn't help but feel pleasantly surprised at Kyoko's reaction. He grinned broadly, noting the flush creeping farther up her neck.

" _SO_!" Clearly flustered, Kyoko whirled to set the groceries out on the counter at breakneck speed. "What did you want me to make tonight for dinner?"

Taking advantage of her distraction, Ren gently pushed her away from the counter and out of the kitchen door. At her confused look, he wagged a playful finger.

"Actually," the actor beamed down at her, "I'll be making dinner tonight!"

"…"

"Please don't make that face."

Out of politeness, Kyoko tried to wipe the look off her face as if Ren had asked her to dunk her head in the toilet and flush repeatedly. When she opened her mouth in obvious protest, Ren decided to play his trump card.

"I'm making, " the actor leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "a _magical_ dish!"

The result was immediate awe. Effectively silenced, the fantasy-prone waitress' amber eyes widened in absolute glee… then slowly widened even further in absolute horror as she witnessed Ren cook.

Trying to remember how the recipe went – The dish would be fine if some egg shells and chicken bones went in on accident, right? – Ren continued to beam as he bustled around the kitchen. Chopping the onions and carrots – Did he have to peel them first? Weren't the skins nutritious or something? Kyoko would probably consider it a waste if he got rid of them – Ren grinned down at his hostess and couldn't help but feel pleased that, even though she initially looked completely shell-shocked, upon noticing his irrepressible smile, Kyoko began laughing.

Finally, Ren managed to finish pan-frying the omelet – only took a total of 21 eggs to get it right and not burn it to inedible cinders – and dumped the omelet off the pan and onto the gigantic mound of rice. As he brought the plate to the small coffee table in the living room, Kyoko looked about bursting with a million questions.

"Omurice?" Settling down next to him, she asked, perplexed. "How is omurice magic?"

"It's not just any omurice!" Still unable to suppress his boyish glee, Ren set a ketchup bottle on the table that she regarded with a quizzical look. "It's _Maui_ omurice."

When Kyoko just sat there looking at him, confusion obviously written on her face, Ren paused and explained. A long time ago, he had a… friend who taught him how to make this dish. Eating it could help you defeat anything. You just had to write the magic words on top, and by eating it, you could gain what you were missing most.

"Now!" Ren regarded Kyoko with a hesitant smile. "What would you like for me to write on top?"

After hearing the story, Kyoko sat silently for a long time. Then her gaze, like a magnet, drew over to the poster of Fuwa Sho on the living room wall and then over to the other, unoccupied bedroom.

At her reaction, a heavy, sinking pit of suspicion formed in his gut. It was the same feeling that he'd had the night before when Kyoko had cried at those lines from the script… But now her pained gaze confirmed what he had only suspected previously.

'So that's how it actually is… Fuwa Sho, huh?"

Finally, Kyoko closed her eyes and sighed deeply. For a moment, Ren was sure she was going to get up from the table and have nothing to do with his "magic". She was going to just crawl right back into bed and start the cycle all over again the next day. Just work, home, hope, and wait… and wait… and wait…

For some reason, this hurt him, and Ren felt the pit twist in his stomach.

Then Kyoko's amber eyes flashed open with determined fire, and she smiled serenely up at him. Ren's heart skipped a beat.

"Courage," the waitress requested. Her smile a tad sad but steady, Kyoko repeated, "Can you write 'courage'?"

In response, Ren grinned back.

"I definitely can."

Thirty minutes later, Kyoko had learned why Ren called it _Maui_ omurice. Apparently, 'Maui' was short for 'Mazui'.

Stomachs and intestines desperately churning to process the toxins as fast as possible, the two lay on the ground, bellies bulging, and Ren curled in the fetal position, face to the floor.

"I think…" The usually dignified actor grumbled into the carpet. "I think I feel _more_ defeated right now, not less..."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kyoko lift a leaden arm off her eyes, and with only a small grimace, she began to laugh, her clear voice ringing in the air. Unable to help himself, Ren joined her, at first in short, stifled chortles that eventually evolved into side-clutching, tear-forming laughter.

"Oh dear…" Kyoko finally gasped, trying to catch her breath. "I can't laugh like that right now. The Maui omurice was already too much…"

Laughter petering off, Ren rolled onto his back and turned his head to look at the young woman. He caught her eye, and for a moment, the two just lay there, smiling at each other. The world at peace.

Then suddenly as if in epiphany, Kyoko sat up and turned to look at the poster on the wall, then back at Ren. A mischievous grin danced across her lips. Down on the ground, a fizzy, churning feeling played in Ren's stomach, and he wasn't quite sure it was the omurice.

"You know... Tsuruga-san…" Kyoko grinned wildly down at him, her amber eyes sparkling. "I think I'm in the mood to eat some pudding right now. Do you want some?"

His suspicions about the saved, almost enshrined pudding in the fridge confirmed, Ren returned her smile with a brilliant one of his own. "I feel like exploding right about now, Mogami-san. But for you, anything."

Unfortunately, that was the moment that all hell broke loose.

At first, there was a distant sound of counting down. Ren recalled hearing something similar back in America as crowds gathered to count down the new year together. He watched Kyoko cock her head to the side, just as confused as he was.

Then came the shouting. It was a great, tumultuous wave of auditory chaos, rolling up from downstairs. Concerned now, Kyoko flew to her feet and ran to the window. However, Ren was reaching for his phone.

"Oh no…" The two echoed each other and then turned to face one another.

Kyoko let the corner of the blinds drop back down and backed away from the window as if burned. "Tsuruga-san, your fans are rioting outside. I think they're trying to rush the police barricade!"

Tapping furiously on his phone screen, Ren's eyes widened as he saw the pinned top post on his fan forum. He turned the phone toward Kyoko. "Worse. They're determined to flush me out."

As Kyoko read the forum post that exhorted all the fans to overrun the police at the designated time and then invade the apartment building, she shook her head in disbelief. "But they can't get inside my apartment, so you're still safe."

"Actually," Ren grimaced and scrolled down for her. "They're planning to do a room by room search of the entire building. By forced entry if necessary."

"Tsuruga-san…" Amber eyes wide with worry for him, Kyoko searched his face. "What are we going to do?"

Then his phone vibrated. Distracted, Ren glanced at his phone screen then his eyes widened as he read the text from President Takarada: _"Go to the roof. Hurry!"_

"Come on!" Ren called out and grabbed Kyoko's hand.

The actor and the waitress were sprinting out the apartment door before Kyoko even had the chance to stammer, "What? Where are we going?"

"The roof!" Ren called back over his shoulder as they ran down the hall. "My agency is–!"

Then he tensed. There were people coming up the stairwell at the far end of the hall. Masses of screaming, crazed fangirls clawed their way up the steps.

The screaming only intensified as he locked eyes with the women at the top of the steps. Their heads snapped toward him, their mouths gaping open in manic glee.

"IT'S REEEEEEEEN!"

"REN?! WHERE?"

"REN I LOVE YOUUUUU!"

From behind, Kyoko yanked him back the way they had come and Ren quickly found himself pulled forward in her strong grip. She yelled back at him as she banked a hard right down the next hallway. "Come on! This way!"

Behind them, down the hall, Ren could hear the screams getting louder and louder as more and more women crowded onto the floor. Ahead, he could see a double door elevator. The LED display on top of the elevator was counting up to Kyoko's fourth floor.

"Elevator!" The actor yelled in warning.

"Got it!" The dark-haired woman called back, dragging him down another corridor to the left just as the elevator doors scrolled open and another round of girlish screams filled the air behind them.

"You're really fast!" Ren puffed, his heart racing. He made a mental note – if he got out of this building in one piece – to add more sprints to his daily workout schedule.

Kyoko laughed and shot a smile back at him, and for a moment, Ren felt his heart lift. "I bike a lot for work – really far and really fast."

She took a hard left at the next turn and stopped in front of a door labeled 'Roof'. Pulling Ren through and slamming the door behind her, Kyoko led the hunted actor up a final flight of stairs. As the two yanked open the last door and slammed it behind them, Ren reaching back to slip the deadbolt into its groove, the two companions let out a sigh of relief, slumping against the metal. There was no sound of screaming behind the metal door. They had dodged his fans.

"You seem to be able to run a lot faster in the movies." Having caught her breath, Kyoko teased as she stepped away from the door. She grinned up at Ren, sparkling city-light spilling onto her face and the chilled, fresh air turning her cheeks a pleasant pink.

"Clever editing," Ren responded with a coughing laugh as he recovered. "It's not every day that I have to worry about _really_ running for life and limb."

There was a small pause, and then the two began laughing together, their voices ringing out in the clear night air. As if in response, a whirring hum began to sound in the distance, growing closer and louder with each passing second. Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, Ren straightened and peered off into the distance. Beyond the bright, floating lights of the Roppongi skyline, he could make out a small dark object hovering in the air, speeding toward them.

"A helicopter!" Kyoko exclaimed, excited. "When your president gets serious, at least he does it in style!"

Shaking his head and loosing a short guffaw, Ren sighed. "Style? You have no idea…"

A sudden thought struck him, and as they awaited his ride home, Ren turned down to his generous hostess.

"I'm so sorry, Mogami-san," the dark-haired actor said with a frown. "Some of the women might have seen you with me while we were running here. You might have to change your appearance until this all blows over."

"Please don't apologize, Tsuruga-san." Still staring off into the distance, watching the helicopter draw near, Kyoko merely smiled and shook her head. She turned to look up at Ren, and her amber eyes sparkled in the multi-colored night lights of the city. "I was thinking that maybe it was time for a change anyway."

Ren felt her words warm his heart.

"I'll go to the salon tomorrow, but…" Kyoko boldly winked up at him, and raised her voice to shout over the helicopter's growing wind. "But first, I think I'm going to enjoy some pudding. It's just…"

She trailed off, turning to frown at the ground before looking back up at him with that too-bright smile from the first night. Her lying smile. "It's just, I'm so glad you'll be able to go back!"

Seeing the oncoming loneliness in the sad slope of her shoulders, Ren stepped forward on impulse. The helicopter's sound nearly deafening now, Ren had to lean in to shout his next words. "Do you remember the next line from yesterday?"

Frowning now in confusion, Kyoko shouted back, "What?"

Grinning broadly, Ren yelled, "The script, do you remember the next lines?"

Thoroughly baffled at this sudden turn of conversation, Kyoko just looked at him, mystified, blinking hard in the harsh wind. Their dark hair whipped around their faces as the helicopter hovered above, a sturdy rope ladder tumbling down to the roof.

"I believe the next line was," Ren shouted and cupped a hand around Kyoko's ear to yell, "'Misaki, I may have left you, but it was only to protect you. One day soon, though, we will be able to walk side by side. Do you trust me?'"

As he leaned back, Ren took in Kyoko's shocked expression that was quickly turning teary-eyed with a ripe flush working its way up her cheeks. Blinking tears back, Kyoko treated him to the most enrapturing smile as she nodded her head, full of confidence.

She yelled words to him, but in the whirr of the helicopter, they were carried away on the wind. Still, Ren read her lips.

" _See you soon."_

Not good-bye, but see you again. Ren's own smile brightened, and as he grabbed ahold of the rope ladder, he gave her a jaunty salute and began to climb. As LME staff members helped him into the helicopter, Ren turned back to look at her.

Kyoko's radiant smile told Ren that she knew this was not the end, but just the beginning.

 **-x-**

 **Thursday**

Sho was in a bad mood. Not only had the Tsuruga Siege – or whatever the media was calling it now –proven that Tsuruga Ren was still the leading man in showbiz, but that tall, small-headed, dice-rattling brained idiot had somehow chosen _his_ apartment complex to hole up in for three days.

'What are the chances of that?' Sho fumed as he jabbed the elevator's "close door" button several times. As the elevator ascended, Sho considered the possibility that Tsuruga Ren had orchestrated the entire ordeal to get on the nerves of Fuwa Sho – the man who would definitely replace him in the popularity polls as Japan's Number One Bachelor!

Now in a somewhat better mood as he strode up to his apartment door and unlocked it, Sho huffed haughtily to himself. It was definitely a stunt to prove that Tsuruga Ren acknowledged Sho as a rival in the entertainment world! Wait until he got to brag to Kyoko –!

However, Sho's good mood did not last. As he finished unlocking the door and pushed the knob inside, the punk rocker was struck by the untidy nature of his apartment.

There was a futon on the living room floor. There was black pen graffiti on the life-size Fuwa Sho poster that he had gifted Kyoko last year for her birthday. Worst of all–

"There's no pudding!" Sho exclaimed, a hairsbreadth from scandalized. He slammed the fridge shut as he stormed over to Kyoko's bedroom door. That ingrate hadn't even gotten up to welcome him back home! Sure he'd returned at almost one in the morning, but she was usually up this time anyway, having just returned home from her last shift of the day.

Sho harrumphed as he began pounding on Kyoko's door with his fist. A few days gone and that silly girl had grown complacent. See if he got her any more limited edition posters of himself! That ought to teach… her…?

The door to Kyoko's room swung open. There was no one inside. Not only was there no one inside, the room was completely empty. Furniture, clothes, personal memorabilia – all gone. Only a handful of Fuwa Sho posters clung to the otherwise barren walls.

"Kyoko…?" Sho called, uncertain as he entered her room. He spied a bright blue file folder sitting in the middle of the floor and stooped down to pick it up. The file folder was bottom-heavy, and Sho tipped it to pour out a small metal house key into his hand. The rest of the papers in the folder were no less confusing or infuriating.

Inside the folder were a reminder on the remainder of the rent left on the expensive Roppongi Hills apartment home, a copy of the rental agreement that had the apartment listed under his name only, a photocopy of something written on LME letterhead informing one "Mogami Kyoko" of her personal invitation to demonstrate her skill at an upcoming acting tryout, and finally a hand-written note that Sho immediately crumpled up, tossed over his shoulder, and then picked up in order to tear into itty-bitty pieces.

It simply read, "Sorry, Shotaro. I guess I'm a Tsuruga Ren fan now."


	5. The Shinigami 2

Hello loyal readers!

Apologies ahead of time… because this is not the conclusion that you are looking for. LOL I spent all month finishing off the second part of The Shinigami… aaaaaand, I ended up writing twice as much as CH1. So, I'm breaking this up into a second and third part. Don't worry though! Even though today's chapter ends on another cliffhanger – the final, forever for all time, concluding chapter will drop next weekend!

Same trigger warnings as first part apply to today's chapter: Individuals suffering from depression or suicidal ideations may not have a safe experience reading this chapter. Themes addressed in this story include the prevalent problem of suicide in Japan.

Love you all and hope you enjoy! See you next week!

 **-x-**

* * *

 **CH2**

Desperate, panted breaths clouded the chilled autumn air. Rapid, racing footfalls pounded the cement sidewalk. His hands came up to bat away the thick branches and waxy green leaves. His fingers came back scratched and bloodied, but he hardly noticed.

Ren could only see Detective Koga's dark hair as the other officer shook his head sorrowfully. Koga's brown eyes bore into Ren's as the fatal words formed on his lips.

"I'm sorry Tsuruga-kun… Your partner is dead."

Kyoko was dead? Ren felt his heart stop within him. A pit of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ dropped to the bottom of his stomach.

Koga shook his head again and stepped away from the body so Ren could get another look. "I'm so sorry… He's dead."

He?

Ren stepped forward, his soaked boot splashing in a puddle on the asphalt. A dozen black-uniformed LAPD officers ran about the scene in the drenching downpour.

As he approached the tarp-covered body, he recognized the hand poking out from underneath the plastic sheeting. A brand new wedding band shined dully on its finger – the same ring Kuon had handed over during the ceremony only months before.

The cigarette dropped from his mouth and fell to the blacktop, fizzling out immediately in the torrential rain.

From somewhere, Koga's voice came. "I'm sorry Kuon. His blood is on your hands."

Kuon Hizuri looked down. His hands were covered in blood. Rick's blood. But not only on his hands, blood was swelling up around his ankles, then his knees, then his waist. A torrent of blood, the nauseating sweet, copper smell prickling his nose, rose swiftly to consume him whole.

As Kuon screamed, Koga's voice thinned then swelled, no longer the Tokyo detective's but a familiar female voice – shrill and accusing and haunting. Tina.

"You're a murderer!"

Ren woke with a start. He lay in bed, blearily blinking at the white popcorn ceiling of his small, one bedroom apartment. After a few moments to collect himself, the detective sat up. An all-too familiar dizziness and pounding headache immediately accosted him.

Ren groaned and dropped his head into one his hand, searching with the other about the bedspread. Glass clinked as his groping hand sought out the liquor bottles from the night before.

Damn. They were all empty.

He was momentarily tempted to search for another bottle that was only _half_ -empty. But he looked at the clock. It blinked back in unsympathetic neon green: 5:07 AM.

Three hours of sleep. Better than the night before. Ren groaned again and instead reached for the bottle of painkillers on his nightstand.

He'd had enough sleep. Kyoko was still missing. He had a job to get back to.

 **-x-**

 **\- Three days ago -**

 _Ren shifted uncomfortably in front of Kyoko's apartment door. He raised his hand, then lowered it, sighed and then finally knocked, a grimace on his face. There was silence for a few moments, then the sound of hushed voices from farther inside._

 _When no one came to the door, Ren began hammering on it hard._

 _The young blonde man who jerked the door open was shirtless, his dyed hair disheveled._

 _"_ _What the hell, man?" Sho demanded._

 _With well-practiced stoicism, though internally Ren was roiling in turmoil, he said, "Detective Tsuruga Ren. I'm here regarding –"_

 _Sho squinted at him, then interrupted, "I remember you! You're Kyoko's_ senpai _."_

 _Ren felt a ghostly, unseen knife twist in his gut._

 _"_ _What the hell do you want?" Sho sneered. "Kyoko's not here."_

 _Trying to remind himself to breathe deeply, Ren grit his teeth. "You may want to sit down. I have some bad news…"_

 _"_ _About Kyoko?" Sho paled for a moment. Then there was a woman's voice calling to him from the bedroom._

 _"_ _Sho-chan~? Where'd you go? Can't you tell them to come back later?"_

 _As if snapping himself from a trance, Sho shook his head and turned back to Ren, guffawing loudly. "Whatever. Who cares about that stupid, plain girl? I have nothing to do with that rent-skipping bitc–"_

 _The senior detective dearly wished he had broken the blonde's nose, but according to Lory, the man's x-rays came back negative for fracture. Pity._

 **-x-**

Nursing his fifth cup of black coffee for the morning, Ren stared at the photo in front of him. His fingers ran over the plastic evidence bag covering the print, tracing the photographed outline of the sixth victim's gray, lifeless body hanging in the forest. He flipped the photo over and examined the Japanese hiragana letters on the back.

Gibberish, per usual. Ren flipped through the rest of the stack, examining each victim's photo and each series of characters scrawled on the backs. The most recent victim – number nine – had some weird shadow at the edge of her photo… It was shaped like a triangle… It tickled a trace of faint recognition in a corner of the detective's mind.

"Still looking at those photos, huh?"

Yashiro's voice jolted Ren out of his reverie, sending drops of coffee sloshing onto the desk. Apologizing, Yashiro handed the detective a tissue to mop up the spilled drink.

The coroner picked up the photo of the second victim, wiping off the surface of the plastic bag. Examining the hiragana on the back, he mused, "Two months since the killer sent these in to taunt us, and no one has been able to crack the code…"

"Yet," Ren shot back, a little more irritably than he'd meant to.

"Ren…" Yashiro paused and then placed the evidence bag back down on the desk. "Maybe… There isn't a message here. Maybe the cryptologists are right – these are just the ravings of a lunatic. There's nothing to be found–"

"There is." Ren stood abruptly, shuffling the bags back into their designated box and grabbing the coat off the back of his seat. His unspoken words echoed in his mind, 'And I'm going to use it to find her.'

"Ren…"

Detective Tsuruga interrupted his friend, shucking his coat on and replying gruffly as he ducked out of his small office, "I'm going to go talk to a possible witness. I'll be back later."

"Ren!" The coroner called after him, not caring that he was causing a scene in the Special Investigations workroom, detectives poking their heads up above their cubicles to stare. "You can't feel responsible over this. You couldn't have known–!"

The dark-haired detective froze, his friend's words mulling heavily in his mind. He looked down at his hands gripping the evidence box. He wasn't aware that he'd spoken the words aloud until they hung heavy in the air as he left.

"She got taken because I wasn't there for her. I wanted to avoid more regret… But it looks like I got it anyway."

 **-x-**

"Kyoko-san!" A voice urgently hissed her name.

Swimming in the deep darkness of her unconsciousness, Kyoko tried to open her eyes. Some prick of instinct was telling her that something was terribly wrong. But even struggling and straining, her lids opened slowly, sluggishly.

When she finally got them cracked open, the blinding pain of light caused her eyelids to flutter closed again and for her to turn over and groan. There was a dull pain in her right shoulder and wrist as something clanked, restricting her movement.

"Kyoko-san!" This time, there was a hand on her shoulder, shaking her insistently. "Hurry and wake up or else you're going to miss meal time!"

The thin, grainy scent of rice wafted up to her nose. Feeling the pit of hunger in her stomach, Kyoko tried again, and this time she squinted through the pain of the light and the fog in her brain to open her eyes fully. A now-familiar dingy, concrete-lined room – a converted walk-in closet – greeted her along with two grim faces.

"Kyoko-san, you finally woke up!" The shorter woman sitting to her left smiled hollowly at her. As the woman shifted her position to toss one dark pigtail out of her face, the handcuffs clinked against the sturdy metal as they held her arm chained to the iron bars by the door.

"Mou, it's about damn time," the other woman with long dark hair on Kyoko's right groused as she removed her free hand from the detective's shoulder. "We're going to need all the energy we can get if we're going to get out of here. Although... escaping would be a lot faster if we had some help."

Still blinking blearily, Kyoko watched on her right as Kanae shot a glare through the iron bars at a third woman on the opposite side. As the gaunt-looking woman with tattered brown hair set a tray of food down on the floor, her back to the lighted open door and freedom, she gave a troubled frown.

Unlike the first night when Kyoko had met the woman in the park, the brunette remained silent. Kyoko noticed how her face's expression was diminished on the right due to a black eye that puffed the skin up taut.

To Kyoko's left, Chiori began muttering her daily litany of terrifyingly colorful curses at their captor's aide. Kotonami Kanae was much more direct with her confrontation.

"Come on Erika," Kanae snapped. "Why the hell are you doing this? This guy clipped your claws or something? What happened to the proud, stuck-up girl I used to know?"

Ignoring her former high school classmate, Erika turned her head to the side to hide her injury and silently slid the tray forward. Chiori took the initiative to strain and turn her body to grab their meal tray with her free arm while she glared at Erika.

Kanae narrowed her eyes. "Did that asshole beat the spine right out of you? Are you going to let us die for that murderer's sake?"

"Yeah!" Chiori chimed in, gripping the bars with white-knuckled fingers. "Let us go! He's hurting you too, isn't he? Why the hell would you help him?"

Instead of acknowledging the two dark-haired women, Erika slowly stood and silently turned to leave, her raggedly cut hair falling in shadows around her pale face.

However, upon reaching the doorway, the brunette paused and turned back. Her dark eyes locked onto Kyoko's amber. Erika's voice came out weak and creaky, like the hinge of a door seldom used. "Why don't you say anything?"

Kyoko could only blink up at her in surprise. Erika never spoke to them, not even when she and Kanae had recognized each other that first day Kyoko had arrived.

"I'm the reason you're stuck in here," Erika continued, staring with a hardened glare at the floor. "Even though you aren't even supposed to be here. Even though you don't want to die…"

According to Ren, the best way to keep a suspect talking was to remain silent. Kyoko didn't say a word.

Apparently exasperated by the detective's lack of response, Erika whirled around and shrieked, "Why don't you curse me? Why don't you beg for help like everyone else did?"

Thinking back on her own past – all of the regrets and betrayal and emotional manipulation – Kyoko closed her eyes and thought hard about her response. Finally, her eyes opened, and she treated Erika to a small, sad smile.

"It's hard isn't it?" Kyoko said wistfully. "After such a long time, it's hard to see the monster your loved one has become. And it's even harder to see the person he's turned you into, isn't it?"

Erika's only response was to duck her head quickly and leave, slamming the door shut behind her and enveloping the three captive women once again in darkness.

 **-x-**

The elderly convenience store owner said that the night of Kyoko's kidnapping, he had seen a man and a woman helping a light-haired young woman into the back seat of a black sedan. The old man hadn't thought much of it then. The new part of town was full of college students and salarymen running amuck, drinking too much and constantly needing help from colleagues to get back home.

The feed from his storefront's security camera wasn't any more helpful. It showed a grainy black and white video of two figures placing a shorter person into a car, but aside from corroborating that there were two conspirators who had kidnapped Kyoko, there were no new leads.

"Damn…" Ren muttered, leaning in and squinting into the glare of the old, bulky TV monitor. "Can't make out the license plate…"

Behind him, the white-haired owner sighed. "Yes, yes. I'm afraid my security system is quite outdated. Now Hisashi, my nephew who lives upstairs, keeps telling me to update my cameras and computers, but–"

Frustrated at the lack of a new lead, Ren stood and tried to find an opening to excuse himself from the older man's rambling conversation, the detective's mind already back at the station and the pile of potential evidence left to comb through.

"Though I have to admit, from Hisashi's set up upstairs, you can see even the leaves on the bushes in the park quite clearly–"

The detective froze. He swiftly bent down to the owner's height. "Sir, you said your nephew lives upstairs. Does he have camera feed of the square?"

The old man thought to himself for what felt like an age. "Hmm. Yes… Yes, I believe he does."

Ren couldn't hold back his grin.

 **-x-**

"Is it done yet?"

"For the seventeenth time… No!" Detective Koga Hiramune snapped irritably, one of his long legs jiggling up and down under his desk. He glared up at Ren who was hovering over his shoulder. "It doesn't help that you only gave me half the plate's digits and the last two characters of the prefecture name. And it also doesn't help that you're breathing down my neck!"

Grumbling under his breath, Ren sat back in the chair in Koga's office. "I radioed it in from the field… How long is it going to take?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," groused the other detective as he turned away from his computer running the partial plate search. "How'd you get a license plate number anyway?"

Detective Tsuruga explained that the convenience store owner had gone on vacation the day after Kyoko had been kidnapped and hadn't returned until now, therefore none of the store employees had had access to the tapes. And the police certainly couldn't have known about the nephew upstairs who constantly ran a high-definition recording of the plaza, mostly to peep on women in the apartment complexes across the way.

"That guy must have crapped his pants, thinking you were there to arrest him." Koga sniggered into an open hand.

Ren was unable to help a small laugh, finding it odd that he and Koga were in agreement on anything at all. "I'm still going to. I need to send Officer Kijima down to– Wait! There we go!"

Following Ren's pointing finger, Koga turned back to the computer screen. The search program had compiled a list of seven matches to the partial entry, ranking them from most likely to least based on proximity to the incident location.

Ren leaned forward, hand itching to reach around Koga to take control of the mouse. "Quick, bring up the names of the–"

"The people the cars are registered to, I _know_ ," the other detective griped as he clicked. "I'm not a rookie you know."

A list of names as well as license photos and car models compiled on screen next to the plate numbers. Detective Tsuruga did a quick, preliminary scan through the list. He didn't recognize anyone. Sighing, Ren sat back in his seat. Just more leads but nothing concrete–

"Koenji Erika?" Koga frowned as he pointed at the screen. "Isn't that the heiress who went missing two years ago?"

Ren's eyes widened as he leaned forward, once again engaged. "You're right. What did her father's business specialize in again…?"

"Pharmaceuticals," Koga grumbled. "Hers was one of my first cases with the S.I.T. Her asshole dad kept pestering us so much to find her. Then one day out of the blue, he just stopped bothering us. Never found out why."

Mind whirling with the case's loose ends, Detective Tsuruga made a noncommittal noise and thanked Koga briefly before standing up to walk back to his desk.

"Hey."

Caught in his thoughts, Ren blinked and stopped.

"I just wanted to say…" The other senior detective paused to gather a sheaf of papers off his printer – a copy of the names and license plates numbers. He offered them to Ren before finishing casually, "I've always hated you."

Taken aback, hand barely grasping the small stack of papers, Ren froze. "Huh?"

"I mean, if it weren't for you, I'd definitely be the most popular detective here," Koga sighed and shook his head as if pitying himself, sending dark wavy hair flying. "After all, you've always been the main target of the department's ladies and the favorite of the higher ups. How are the rest of us normal guys supposed to compete?"

"Uh…"

Unashamed of his matter-of-fact rant, Koga continued, "A lot of times, I would think to myself, 'Man, is this guy even human? Just make a mistake every once in a while!'"

Unsure how to respond, Ren just stood in silence, a withering grimace on his face.

"But then I found out what an idiot you were in the love department – I mean, anyone with half an eyeball could see there was something between you and Kyoko-chan, but you were both ignoring it." Koga sighed theatrically and then turned to Ren, smiling brilliantly. "So I don't hate you anymore. I just pity you now."

"Ok…"

"I mean, based on the way you've been acting the past few days, you must have some super secret dark past where you hurt someone close to you, and you spend all your time moping around with a polite, smiling, perfect front to keep everyone at an arm's length."

Ren had forgotten how good of a detective Koga Hiramune was, possessing an uncanny intuition and insight into the human psyche.

The man in question finally locked eyes with Ren, quirking a brow as a he continued, "But c'mon man. Stop living in the past. If you're going to be my rival, you can't have such a lame weakness."

"Um… Thank you… I think."

Koga laughed at Ren's stilted response and turned back to his computer, waving a hand over his shoulder. "Just remember, you don't have to go this alone, you know? A lot of us are tracking down leads too. We all want to find Kyoko-san."

And with that, Koga shooed Ren away from his workspace. Feeling insulted but strangely comforted, Ren returned to the other side of the workroom and sat heavily at his desk with a large sigh. Koga had insisted on hunting down criminal records and other info on the partial matches, leaving Ren nothing to do. Setting the printed copies down on his desk, Ren turned in his swivel chair. Kyoko's desk in their shared cubicle caught his eye.

Her empty chair greeted him. Feeling a little silly, Ren got up from his area and walked the few steps to his partner's side of the cubicle. Slowly, he sat down. Adjusting to the short height of her office chair, Ren turned forward, very aware that he was looking at the view Kyoko would have seen every day at work.

On the desk next to her work computer sat several neat piles of papers, and beside those stood a framed photo of herself with the Darumaya owners. There was another picture of her parakeet, Bo. Ren smiled and picked up the frame. Luckily, after they'd found her updated address from HR, Yashiro had taken the bird in to care for him while his owner was away.

Ren replaced the photograph and perused her framed bachelor's degree from the University of Tokyo: Criminal Justice with a minor in Linguistics. Kyoko had been proud of that – she'd managed to graduate Suma Cum Laude while working several jobs to put herself through school.

Ren grinned at that. His partner was such a diligent worker with a bright, indefatigable spirit. But something was missing…

No photos of family. No pictures with friends.

A bright, indefatigable spirit hiding a sad, young woman all alone in the world. Just like his polite mask hid a scared man burdened by regret.

Leaning back in the chair, Ren put a hand to his temple as he frowned, thinking.

"Koga's right," the detective muttered to himself, his hand dropping into his lap. "I am an idiot."

Sighing heavily, Ren scooted the chair back and turned abruptly before standing, eager to get back to work with fresh motivation to find Kyoko. However, as he pushed the chair back, Ren didn't notice the backrest of the swivel chair had pushed one of the neat stacks of papers at the edge of her desk at an angle. So much so, that as he stood, the force nudged the teetering pile off the desk, sending papers fluttering to the floor.

Ren cursed and bent down to pick up the scattered papers, but as he gathered them into a neat stack to replace on the desk, his hand paused. The stack was mostly white computer paper with dozens of hiragana letters written and re-written over and over again, some vertically, some diagonally, some crossed out, some jumbled, re-written, and crossed out again.

His breath caught. He recognized this combination of letters. Hurriedly gathering all the papers, Ren stuffed them all on Kyoko's desk, flipping them over, shuffling between them, crinkling some of the pieces in his haste. Then he stopped.

At the bottom of the stack, with a shaking hand, Ren uncovered the final page. At least, he assumed it was the final page in Detective Mogami's attempts at deciphering the hiragana found on the killer's photographs.

For at the bottom of the page, circled several times in bright red pen, were the words, "I will take their memories and treasure them forever. _ don't forget."

The rest of the message was blank.

 **-x-**

Koenji Erika, Kyoko learned from Kanae as the trio of women conversed quietly in their dark prison, had been the golden girl at their private high school. Friends, grades, leadership positions – there was very little her father's influence and pharmaceutical fortune couldn't buy her.

Except love.

Kanae shared with a smidge of bitter satisfaction that Erika had been well known throughout the school to be the target of money-hungry and power-seeking boys.

Every relationship she'd ever been in had ended in disaster.

And now, as Kyoko silently watched the poor young woman with ragged brown hair ready her tray of daily shots, the detective ominously knew that her earlier bold assumption of a soured and abusive relationship between the heiress and murderer had indeed struck the mark.

Apparently, even after high school, Erika had continued her pattern of poor relationship choices.

Oblivious to the detective's scrutiny, with the smoothness of much repetition, Erika's hands deftly finished drawing up clear liquid from the glass bottle into the small plastic syringe. Chiori, the closest to the door, always went first. The short girl hurled verbal vitriol at Erika, but still cooperated, bringing her shoulder close to the bars for the injection. Chiori winced as Erika injected the contents of the syringe into her upper arm, but she knew – as they all did – that if they didn't cooperate with the shots, no one would eat for the next day or two.

Apparently, Kanae had attempted to resist her first day and neither she nor Chiori had been given any food or water until the third day when Kyoko had shown up.

Silently, avoiding eye contact, Erika moved over to the auburn-haired detective, preparing her arm with a quick swipe of an alcohol pad.

"You're scared no one is ever going to love you after this," Kyoko said suddenly, watching the former heiress closely. "He's convinced you of it."

The broken young woman didn't say anything. But her actions spoke for her. She froze, her eyes trained on the floor. The needle on the tip of the syringe trembled in the air.

"You know he's lying to you, right?" the detective continued, her voice gentle. "He tells you you're worthless – that he's the only one who could ever value you – but he's wrong."

Erika remained silent, her hands shaking.

Encouraged by her response, Kyoko spoke again, "My ex… He was the same way. He had me convinced that no one could ever love someone like me. But I found someone else, someone who… who cares for me."

"If he cared about you," Erika broke her silence, still staring at the floor, her voice raw. "Why are you here?"

Her implied question hung heavy in the air. _If he loved you, how did he let this happen?_

Kyoko swallowed, at a loss. Then she closed her eyes, grimacing against the truth. "We… had a fight. I was angry… or scared maybe? I think I was scared my ex was right, and I pushed this man away. But… I trust him. I know that he's looking for me."

The brunette slowly looked up at her, a light shining in the back of her eyes that Kyoko hadn't seen before.

"Koenji-san," Kyoko murmured, confidence solidifying her voice, "I know he's going to find me."

"No one is ever going to find you, Miss Detective."

Her heart plummeted to the bottom of her gut. Head whipping around to face the door, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as a man entered the room. Though Kyoko had not seen him until now, she was dead certain this man approaching the bars was the Shinigami killer.

Glaring at him, she swallowed hard. Despite all her expectations that he was some greasy basement-dwelling creep, the man standing before her was an astonishingly normal-looking Japanese man. Average height, average build, dark flat hair cropped cleanly over his ears, white button up shirt and dark slacks.

The only thing that sent another chill careening down her spine were his eyes. They were empty pools of darkness. Devoid of anything.

And – Kyoko narrowed her eyes – he looked somewhat familiar. But she couldn't seem to place his face.

As for the other two women, they were hurling constant curses at their captor. Chiori's threats came out as half-coherent slurs as the medicine forced her to drift off into unconsciousness until it was only Kanae shouting.

"You bastard! Let us out!" Kanae was screaming.

"Now, now," the man said stoically with all the warmth of a crypt. "No need to be irrational. I know you don't mean that."

Interrupting Kanae's spluttered retort, Kyoko barked, "What the hell have you been dosing us with?"

"Hoh~? The detective speaks. To honor the occasion, I will tell you."

His dead eyes now focused on her, Kyoko felt a slimy, heavy feeling worm its way through her gut.

"It's a sedating mixture courtesy of Koenji-san's father," the killer responded, eyes locked on Kyoko's. "Mostly a very long-acting Benzodiazepine."

Kyoko almost growled. That was how he had avoided detection until now. The class of anxiety medication was a common prescription among the depressed and anxious anyway. No one would have thought it suspicious to find doses in his victims' tox screens during autopsy.

The killer's eyes slid away from Kyoko's slowly, like a snake regarding prey to be devoured later, and shifted over to the tall, dark-haired woman. "Not that this information will matter much longer to you, Kotonami-san."

"What do you mean?" Kanae demanded, taken aback.

Having scurried away from Kyoko instinctively when her abuser had entered the room, Erika took advantage of her old classmate's distraction to inject the mixture into her arm.

Kanae cursed and recoiled as the killer slid closer to the prison's bars.

"You requested to die…" The man spoke slowly, as if reminding a remedial child of a chore she had forgotten. "I believe your words were, 'Just one step in front of the 10:30 Yamanote Line train, and it will all be over.'"

Blanching in fear, Kanae stuttered, "I… I didn't really mean it. I take it back! I had just been feeling really discouraged, but–!"

Tutting slowly, the man tilted his head to the side, regarding her with an expression of pity. "No need to feel ashamed now. I have seen so many young women like you. Unable to escape the misery of their own lives. But don't worry. You can be the next one. I will help you release the shackles of this life and fulfill your dreams. And I'll treasure your memory forever."

"No…" Kanae's words began to slur as the sedative took effect, her body slumping slowly to the ground as her knees collapsed beneath her. "I don't want to die…I want to live… I…"

Kyoko could stay silent no longer. The words burst forth. "No! Take me instead!"

Suddenly, the serial killer whirled on her, his eyes no longer empty but flashing in fiery anger. He hissed, "Not _you_. You're just a fake. There would be no beauty in your death since you don't want to die–"

"But I do!" Kyoko quickly interjected, willing tears to come to her eyes. She knew she had to make it convincing, otherwise this arrogant man would never go against his twisted moral code to take her instead of Kanae.

But inwardly, her mind was racing at the reminder. How indeed had the killer known she was a fake?

"I don't want this any more… Everything I had written online was true. My life is such a heavy burden."

The man's dark eyes narrowed. "Forgive me if I don't believe you, Miss Detective."

To know she was a detective, he had to be connected to the police, but how? Could he have an informant or something inside the S.I.T.? Why else would her kidnapping method have been so different from the other two girls'?

However, that mystery would have to remain unsolved, because her priority was to get Kanae out of this mess. Her mind sought for a convincing reason.

"The man I loved and devoted my life to for years and years – he used me for money and cheated on me and tossed me aside like garbage…" Kyoko swallowed and looked pointedly at Erika who was ready with the syringe but seemed only able to stare back at her. "He told me I'd never be loved by anyone else. And he was right."

The Shinigami killer was silent, contemplating. But Kyoko continued staring straight at Erika, willing her to understand the duplicity.

"So please…" the detective pleaded, "Please take me next instead!"

After what felt like an eternity, the man nodded. "Fine."

Kyoko had to swallow a sigh of relief as the killer turned to Erika.

"Finish your job," he snapped. "Why else do I keep you around?"

The former heiress blinked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, and took one long look at Kyoko before jabbing the syringe into her awaiting arm.

The room dissolved into darkness.

 **-x-**

Ren's cell phone buzzed on the desk, but he ignored it. He was so close now… Using her Linguistics degree to its fullest extent, the code Detective Mogami had unraveled was a complex one, so convoluted that Ren hadn't been surprised the Special Investigation Team's cryptography unit hadn't made much headway with it.

But the missing word was almost done. One more picture with the ninth victim arrived from the post office the day after Kyoko had been taken – and it was the missing word, Ren was sure of it.

Finally, after another minute, Ren sat back and read the completed message.

"I will take their memories and treasure them forever. _Photographs_ don't forget," he murmured, pondering. The detective turned back to the box of the Shinigami's photos he'd checked out from the evidence locker again. Sorting through them, Ren's hand hovered over the ninth victim's photo. Something about it…

Again, that small triangular shadow in the corner leapt out at him as odd. Holding the picture up to the light, Ren squinted at it.

"Yo, Tsuruga-kun!"

Ren almost jumped, startled out of his deep reverie. Behind him, Detective Koga failed to hide his snickering behind a large hand as he peeked through the doorway into Ren's cubicle.

"Sorry to scare you," the other detective finally managed, "I just came over to tell you that we found out Koenji Erika's car had been re-registered. The local prefecture's motor vehicle department had the car under a different name, but due to a clog in red tape, the change hadn't been processed through to the national database."

Ren frowned. "Who is the car under now?"

Hiramune leaned in the doorway, his arms crossed. "Maeda Hiroshi. The registration process doesn't require photo ID, and the address to which he registered the car was an apartment building that was demolished last year. But his name sounds so familiar! I keep wracking my brain and for the life of me, I can't place it…" Koga paused, peeking at the slew of photographs on Ren's desk. "Why are you looking at a hard copy of the ninth crime scene? Don't you know all the crime scene pics have better resolution on the computers?"

"Huh? Oh, this isn't from the _crime scene_ , this is–"

"Yeah, it is," Detective Koga insisted as he stepped into Ren's office. He plucked the photograph in the evidence baggie from his rival's hand and squinted at it. "I hadn't seen this exact one though. The angle's… different…"

"Wait." Eyes widening in realization, Ren spun back around in his chair and began typing furiously on his computer. Quickly, he brought up the most recent victim's crime scene photos. Koga brought the physical print forward and the two senior detectives looked back and forth.

"Look at this leaf here, it's the same one next to this twig."

"And the rate of decomp is the same in both pictures." Koga squinted at the monitor, as if hoping that would produce answers. "What does it mean? The killer took his pictures minutes before we got to the scene?"

" _'_ _Photographs don't forget_ …'" Ren murmured pensively. Then he startled at a sudden thought.

He clicked quickly through the many photos until he came to one in particular. This digital forensic photograph of the body had been taken from a slightly different angle, but it still included the plastic yellow evidence number marker in the upper right corner. The harsh street lighting cast a shadow to the lower left, near the body. A small, triangular shadow.

"What…?" Koga breathed and flipped the physical print over in his hand. His eyes widened. "This is the picture that the Shinigami had sent in?"

Hand rising to pass angrily over his face, Ren slammed his other fist down on his desk. "No wonder Detective Mogami got kidnapped. That bastard knew it was a sting operation all along! He's a forensics photographer with the Tokyo Police!"

Biting back a curse of his own, Koga growled, " _That's_ where I'd heard that name before!"

Leaning over Ren to snatch his desk phone from its cradle, Koga angrily punched in a phone number as he explained, "He's not just any Tokyo PD forensics photographer. The S.I.T. has been employing one of their _own_ _department_ photographers for these cases instead of using the local ones. My bet is that Maeda Hiroshi has been the photographer volunteering for all these cases. I always thought he was a creepy bastard."

The phone rang once before Ren heard the S.I.T.'s secretary pick up.

Koga snapped, "Yamazaki! It's Detective Koga. Get Maeda Hiroshi, the forensics photographer, on the line." There was a long pause. Then the detective barked, "What? What do you mean the record shows he's out sick? Get me his last known location! Send a couple of cars with officers to his house too! –Yes, we'll get the search warrant!"

Slamming the phone down on its cradle, Koga turned back to Ren, ranting, "No wonder this guy has been so damn hard to catch. He's one of ours! ...Tsuruga-kun… What is it?"

The entire time Koga had been on the phone, Ren had hardly been listening. The dark-haired detective had brought his cell out to call Lory and request a search warrant. However when he had checked his phone screen, he'd noticed a new text message.

The message had been from Kyoko.

 **-x-**

* * *

Say whaaat? Haha I warned you, another cliffhanger! But don't worry, the final chapter and conclusion to this story will drop next weekend. So don't forget to alert or fave this story so you get notified when I post!

And if you're wanting even more Skip Beat goodness, don't forget to check out my other long-running series, **Spy Beat**.

Thanks all! Until next week!


	6. The Shinigami 3

Hello loyal readers!

Welcome back to the final installment (FINALLY I KNOW!) of The Shinigami, detective thriller AU! Sorry again for turning it into a three-shot, but I felt that the flow was better this way and I also needed another week to iron out some plot details.

Same trigger warnings as first two parts apply to today's chapter: Individuals suffering from depression or suicidal ideations may not have a safe experience reading this chapter. Themes addressed in this story include the prevalent problem of suicide in Japan.

Thanks again all you wonderful readers and reviewers!

 **-x-**

* * *

 **CH3**

 **Last time:**

 _Slamming the phone down on its cradle, Koga turned back to Ren, ranting, "No wonder this guy has been so damn hard to catch. He's one of ours! ...Tsuruga-kun… What is it?"_

 _The entire time Koga had been on the phone, Ren had hardly been listening. The dark-haired detective had brought his cell out to call Lory and request a search warrant. However when he had checked his phone screen, he'd noticed a new text message._

 _The message had been from Kyoko._

 **-Five minutes earlier-**

When Kyoko awoke next from her drug-induced slumber, she was entirely disoriented. Gone were the gray concrete walls and hard, unforgiving metal bars of the closet prison she had grown to know. Instead, as she groggily rolled over, fighting a wave of nausea and thick stupor to sit up, she noticed from some far corner of her mind that she was sitting inside the white plastic-porcelain of a fairly standard hotel ofuro bathtub. Above her was a small, opaque glass window, neon city lights shining blearily through.

From some far corner of her drugged mind, recognizing even through the blurry glass the red and yellow color pattern, Kyoko thought, 'Why am I at that katsu place next to work?'

But that made no sense. Why was there a bathtub next to the katsu place? She blinked and turned.

Gone also were her steadfast fellow captives, replaced instead by Erika who knelt at the edge of the tub, fiddling with something that sounded metallic. Right behind Erika, in the doorway of the bathroom, stood an average-looking man with dead eyes.

Becoming more and more lucid with each passing moment as the medicine wore away, Kyoko glared at the Shinigami. She readied herself, about to spring from the tub to try her chances with physically overpowering him when she felt a ratcheting metal _clicliclick_ at her right wrist.

Alarmed, she looked down. A pair of handcuffs chained Kyoko's hand to the metal tap of the bathtub. She looked up quickly to see Erika back away, the abused woman's eyes wide as if in horror at what she'd done.

Gliding forward with all the menacing grace of a python, the Shinigami killer stared down at Kyoko. With purposeful slowness, he turned to the edge of the tub, just out of Kyoko's comfortable reach. He began emptying his back pocket of a brand new razor blade, credit card receipt, and hotel keycard so he could sit on the shower stool next to the ofuro bath. Desperate to find a weapon, Kyoko's quick eyes darted over to the items laying on the tub's wide, flat edge.

But the razor was wrapped in plastic, far too cumbersome to quickly overpower her captors. And lying on top, the paper sheath around the plastic hotel keycard would be good for paper-cuts but not much else.

Then Kyoko's eyes widened in realization. On the paper sheath was written–! And combined with the neon signs outside, the only place she could be was–!

"It seems that it's time, Miss Detective."

The killer's almost mournful tone snapped Kyoko out of her thoughts. She turned back to glaring at him. Now that Kanae was out of danger, Kyoko felt free to show her open disdain of the man.

"Time for what?" She growled out, tugging at the handcuffs experimentally.

"Hmm? So the truth comes out, does it? I had a feeling you had been lying to me." In response, the killer slowly, languidly slid the razor blade package out from under the keycard and began unwrapping it. "If _not_ killing you now weren't such a grave inconvenience, I would bring you back and take the other one instead. Such a pity, really. I had been planning to frame you for all the murders in the end, but…"

The Shinigami made a small, helpless gesture with his hands, the newly opened blade that glinting in the dim hotel lights.

Kyoko was about to spit in his face and tell him where he could stick that razor blade when he unexpectedly procured a cell phone from his other pocket. And he offered it to her. Her cell phone.

With a benevolent smile that looked pasted on, the serial killer intoned, "I am feeling generous today. You may have one text message to say good-bye to your friends at the S.I.T."

"What's the catch…?" Kyoko asked with narrowed eyes, fingers itching to snatch the phone but wary of the razor blade he gripped in his other hand.

"No catch…" The man's expression flashed dark, his eyes wide and manic. "Just make sure you tell them to stop trying to find me. I mustn't be stopped."

Frightened at his sudden change in countenance but trying not to show her fear, Kyoko reached forward with cautious hands and took her phone, careful not to drop it into the tiled tub.

"And make sure I can see what you're writing," the killer intoned, his voice lilting in mock-jest. As he leaned forward, pressing the razor blade to her neck, his eyes betrayed no amusement. "We can't have you making any mistakes, can we?"

Swallowing hard, feeling the edge of the metal blade riding along her thin neck, Kyoko swiped open her phone with trembling fingers. Her hand hovered over the name in the message app just a moment before she selected it and began typing.

She was so nervous. She only had one chance to get this right. Each letter seemed an agony, her jittery fingers appearing to tap all the wrong characters.

The Shinigami chuckled as she had to delete and reattempt her final sentence for the third time, "How adorable. You must be so nervous."

Kyoko hesitated before finishing her message. In that short time, the killer seemed to lose his patience and plucked the phone from her hands. The detective watched as he read the text again, her heart hammering in her throat.

"Oh you _poor_ thing," he intoned, his eyes dark and predatory. An insincere smile slithered over his features. "But very convincing. It will do."

As the killer busied himself sending the message, Kyoko glanced to the side, behind the man, straight at Erika.

"You can be free, you know," Kyoko whispered urgently. "You don't have to do this."

The broken heiress shuddered a gasp and ducked her head. Her trembling lips opened to speak – but a sudden move from above startled them both.

The dead-eyed killer shot forward and slapped the detective soundly across her face. The razor blade in his hand sliced through her upper cheek, missing her eye by a few centimeters.

Too surprised to even yell, the detective's hand came up to cradle her wounded face, fingers soon slick with blood. Instead, she glared at the man with all the venom her eyes could muster.

"She does whatever I tell her to do," he hissed, his eyes flashing fire. Seeming to catch himself, the Shinigami straightened up and turned away, voice drifting off as he lost himself in thought. "Oh dear. Look at what a mess you've made. After all my careful planning, the pictures are going to look…"

Heart pounding and breathing heavy, Kyoko held her cheek, trying to press on the wound to staunch the blood.

As she closed her eyes briefly, she whispered under her breath, "Please, Tsuruga-senpai. Please understand it."

 **-x-**

"Tsuruga-kun? Hey! What the hell is going on?" Koga growled as he reached forward to shake the stricken detective. As if on cue, Koga's own work phone started ringing, adding to the din.

Cell phone in hand, message open, Ren had stood so abruptly that his office chair had upended, crashing backward to the ground.

Seeing that Ren was still frozen in shock, Koga took it upon himself to snatch the smartphone from his rival's hand. After quickly reading the message, Koga looked back and forth between Ren and the ominous message on the phone. "What the hell? What is this? Kyoko-san sent you this?"

"It's a good-bye note," Ren breathed weakly, suddenly feeling like he needed to throw up.

"Dammit!" Koga snarled and reached for his own still-ringing phone, picking it up with a gruff, "What!"

About to fly to pieces inside, Ren wrestled his phone back from Koga's hand. His eyes flew over the message again and again. Assuming she had been the one to send it, there was no way that Kyoko had written a message without hiding some kind of clue inside. The phone drooped in his hand.

But what was the point if Kyoko was already…dead.

Just at the thought, Ren felt the bottom drop out of his world.

"Thanks Yamazaki." Meanwhile, the curly-haired detective across from him was barking into his phone. "Call the Chief! Tell him we need an arrest warrant! And call the S.A.T.! Tell them to meet us there. And hurry the hell up!"

Turning to the panic-stricken Ren, Koga snapped, "Wake up, Tsuruga! Yamazaki ran the asshole's credit cards and found that his last purchase was at the Shinjuku Hyatt gift shop!"

"That's the hotel right across the street." Ren spun to look out the far office window. Just beyond the bright yellow and red advertisement for a nearby katsudon shop, the Hyatt's neon lights displayed the resort's name. Incredulous and growing angry, he growled, "He's taunting us by trying to kill Mogami-san right under our noses."

"Yeah and he paid five minutes ago! He's still there!" Detective Koga barked and pushed the shell-shocked Ren toward the exit of his cubicle.

"That means Kyoko might still be alive–"

"Yeah! So _let's go_!"

His heart in his throat, Ren almost stumbled in his haste as he burst out of his cubicle and sprinted down the hall, Koga following close at his heels.

Ignoring the elevator and heading straight for the stairs, Ren hurried down the flights, taking four stairs at a time with his long stride. Unable to help himself, his mind drifted back to the text message he'd read.

 _"_ _Tsuruga-senpai,_

 _Hello after such a long time_

 _You must not feel responsible for_

 _Anything that is about to happen_

 _To me_

 _Thank you for everything._

 _My deepest apologies for troubling_

 _You with a message like this._

 _But unfortunately, you're the only one I have left_

 _Death awaits me shortly_

 _And I wanted to tell you before it came_

 _You, I trust to understand me_

 _-Kyoko"_

As Ren reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped. Koga cursed as he almost ran into the dark-haired detective from behind.

"What?" His rival demanded. "What is it?"

It had struck Ren. Through the odd grammatical structure of the message, almost poetic in its brevity, Kyoko's hidden message became clear.

Slipping the phone out of his pocket to review the text once more, Ren peered down at his screen, baffled as he repeated the decoded phrase.

" _'_ _Hyatt. My. Bday'_?"

He knew she was at the Hyatt. But why her birthday?

 **-x-**

Kyoko knew she had to stall for time. Even if Ren could decipher her message – hopefully she was at the hotel she thought she was, in the room she thought she was – he needed time to get there.

Maybe he wouldn't get her message in time. Maybe he wouldn't be able to understand it. Maybe the katsu place outside the window was actually a chain store, and she was in an entirely different hotel–!

No. Kyoko swallowed hard and huffed out a calming breath. After so many days, Ren would be close. He would solve it. And he would come for her. She trusted him.

All she needed to do was stall.

"Why are you doing this?" The auburn-haired detective bit out, glaring up at the killer as he reached over her to start the taps on the bathtub. The freezing cold water quickly soaked through the bottom of her pants and socks. "Some gross dead body fetish?"

Meeting her gaze squarely with the haughty look of a professor schooling an ignorant pupil, the Shinigami stated curtly, "Did you know that in Japan on average, 70 people per day die by suicide?"

Unsure where he was taking the conversation, Kyoko chose to stay quiet. A good move. Apparently she had found the one topic that would make the Shinigami particularly chatty.

The man continued, reciting another statistic, "And did you also know that suicide is the leading cause of death for Japanese men and women 20-35 years old?"

"…"

"All the politicians say it's a problem," the man said with mock solemnity before dropping his sarcasm and skewering Kyoko with a wide-eyed stare. "But the bullying, the over-working, the social shame – the roots of the issue just go on and on and on with no end in sight…"

The killer shifted in his crouched stance to lean forward toward Kyoko. His wild, questioning eyes caused a stir of unease in the pit of her stomach. She tried to lean away, feeling the _clank_ of her right wrist as the handcuffs kept her from escaping any further.

"But then I realized something." He blinked once, slowly, his eyebrows rising as if to emphasize his previous epiphany. "To those who despair of this life – having them kill themselves – is a mercy."

"You're wrong." Kyoko snapped before she could stop herself. The slimy feeling in her gut had caused the automatic denial to rise in her throat. "Despair is circumstantial. Circumstances change. People can change! And you're stealing that chance from them–"

"And then I realized something else." Ignoring her and talking over her protests, the Shinigami continued, unfazed. He leaned forward still, his head cocking to the side. "Many times, these people who want the mercy of death are too afraid to embrace their choice. And that's where I found my calling."

Kyoko found herself shaking in rage and frustration.

The Shinigami continued, his voice growing louder with conviction, "After all, Japan has a long history of restoring honor to those who despair of life if they arrange their own deaths."

The detective's eyes narrowed as she searched his expression, "You're bringing up the ancient tradition of seppuku to defend your horrific actions–"

"I am merely their kaishakunin." The Shinigami's voice took on the defensive tinge of a man woefully and chronically misunderstood, as if he had explained this point to many people in the past without any understanding him. Kyoko assumed all his past victims hadn't been very sympathetic to his cause. "I stand behind them and support them! If they falter in their pursuit of honor and escape from despair, I am there to correct them!"

"You can try to justify it however you want," Kyoko sneered, trying to prod this newfound weakness in his ego. "You're only there to murder them."

Eyes ablaze, the Shinigami's hand shot up, razor blade ready to strike again. Anticipating the outburst, Kyoko glared at him, breath ragged as she almost dared him to hit her again, the expectant silence heavy.

She knew – as well as he did – that he didn't want to mess up his staged crime scene again, so painstakingly crafted for her death.

Instead, the serial killer breathed out a shuddering sigh, and his arm jerkily, like a broken automaton, drooped down to his side. He stood, his eyes once again cold and calculating.

The Shinigami hissed, "I just give them what they really want. What they're too afraid to ask for."

"What they _need_ is help," Kyoko growled back, defiant. "Not to be murdered by a sociopath with a god complex."

Kyoko felt her heart sink into her stomach when, instead of rising to her bait, the killer coldly turned around, reaching for the DSLR camera behind him. As he played with the settings and took a couple of test shots, blinding the detective with several flashes, Kyoko's heart hammered harder in her chest, the knot of anxiety strangling her as the water in the tub rose above her knees.

She was out of time.

 **-x-**

The prim and proper-looking woman cowering behind the hotel's front desk was going to be next to useless, Ren could already tell.

"Tokyo PD," Koga barked as he strode testily up to the desk and flashed his Special Investigations Team badge at her. "Get me the room number for Maeda Hiroshi–"

"I-I, I'm sorry, sir." The front desk employee's wide, terrified eyes flashed back and forth between Koga and Ren, the two men decked out in bulletproof vests, special-issue pistols strapped in their shoulder holsters. "O-Our company's policy indicates that all queries be approved by–"

"Do I look like I care about your company's policy?" Koga snapped at her. "Just look him up before I arrest you for obstruction of justice! Maeda Hiroshi!"

"Y-Yes, sir," the employee stammered, her trembling fingers leaping to tap at the keyboard in front of her. After what felt like an eternity to Ren as he paced in front of the counter, his agitated fingers clicking the clasps on his Kevlar vest open and shut, open and shut, the woman fearfully looked up at the two men.

"I'm so sorry sir, but we have no guests registered under that name."

Koga cursed. "I was hoping he'd be stupid enough–"

"Try Koenji Erika," Ren spoke up, his mouth a grim slash.

Another moment of eternity. "I'm sorry, sir."

"He must've paid in cash with a fake ID," Ren mused, panic rising in his chest.

Irritated and sensing that they were running out of time, Detective Koga barked, "Bring up your security footage for the lobby. We'll find them–"

"M-My manager is the only one who–"

While Koga bickered with the front desk employee, Ren turned back on his heel, pacing to try and stave off the churning feeling in his gut. The feeling that he was missing something.

 _'_ _You, I trust to understand me,'_ she had written in the very last line.

He stopped suddenly and reached into his back pocket, bringing out his phone and opening it to the coded message. Running a hand through his dark hair, Ren wracked his brain. Kyoko would have probably only had a few moments to formulate a code and pass along crucial information. What would she have wanted to make sure Ren received?

The killer's name? Coordinates to his hideout? Or…

"'My… birthday…'" Ren breathed. It clicked. He understood. Whirling back around to the frightened woman, Ren demanded, "How many floors does your hotel have?"

Taken aback by the sudden question, the employee managed, "F-fourteen–?"

But Ren was already gone, racing toward the staircase at the other side of the lobby. Over his shoulder, he shouted at Detective Koga.

"1225! That's the room number!"

Behind him, Koga began sprinting after Ren up the stairs. "What?"

"In the message, she wrote the room number! It's her birthday!" As he clambered up the first flight, Ren heard Tokyo PD police cars and the S.A.T. tactical van screech into the parking lot below, and he brought the shoulder-mounted radio to his mouth.

"This is Detective Tsuruga. Suspect and hostages are in room 1225."

The radio squawked to life as the S.A.T. dispatcher replied curtly, "Copy that Detective Tsuruga. Please be advised the hotel elevators have not been secured. We recommend using stairs only until–"

"We know, we know," groused Koga, out of breath as the two detectives rounded the flight of stairs to the fifth floor. Below them, they could hear the tromping footsteps of two-dozen Special Assault Team officers as they began their climb.

Hearing the chatter of the tactical units fill the radio, Ren felt a surge of energy buoy him up the next floor.

Handgun drawn and ready, Ren murmured under his breath, "We're coming, Kyoko. Hang on!"

 **-x-**

"Koenji-san," Kyoko whispered urgently, eyes looking behind the haunted young woman to the killer in the next room. He was busying himself swapping out camera lenses. "You don't have to listen to his lies. You can be free of all this."

"I-I can't! I've done too many things. Bad things," Erika fearfully hissed, glancing over her shoulder at the doorway. Her eyes darted up to Kyoko's and then back down. "He's right. No one would ever–"

"He's wrong," the detective fiercely interrupted, remembering at the last second to lower her voice into a whisper. She searched Erika's face and said slowly, "He's wrong. And you know it. You're just too scared to risk it."

"Sometimes he tells the truth," the former heiress murmured, trying to rationalize her captivity in her own mind. "Sometimes–"

"When we first met in the park," the detective interrupted her softly, urgently. "You said you were drugging me because he promised he'd let you go."

Erika was silent, her face a complex whirl of emotions.

"How truthful was he?"

Still no answer. But Kyoko knew that she knew.

"You have two choices," Kyoko continued, reaching forward with her unbound hand to tuck a gentle finger under Erika's chin and lift the broken woman's face. "Either you believe him and die alone and full of regrets. Or you risk it and choose to believe in yourself."

Erika slowly looked up, her eyes wide. The two women made eye contact.

Sudden, clomping footsteps from the other room caused them to jump. Kyoko's hand dropped back into the tub just as the Shinigami cleared the doorway.

In his clear excitement, fidgeting with the settings on his camera, the killer was far too distracted to be suspicious of their proximity.

Clicking a few more test shots as Kyoko glared up at him and Erika faded dejectedly into the background, the madman grinned. He carefully placed his camera on the shower stool and pronounced the death sentence.

"I am ready."

Before Kyoko could react, the man stepped forward and snatched up her free wrist out of the tub, pinning it to the flat rim. Desperate, Kyoko tried to tear her arm away, pumped her legs – anything! Her other hand tugged uselessly at the handcuffs as they jerked against the metal tap of the tub. Water sloshed in the bathtub as she struggled, spilling violently over the edges. A scream rose in her throat as she saw the razor blade the killer grasped in his other hand.

Life slowed to a crawl, and her vision narrowed, focused solely on that blade getting closer and closer to the pale, delicate skin on her wrist as it lay on the cold, unforgiving white tile. From some far corner of her mind, she could see the soft, fair skin on the side of her wrist pulsate once… twice… thrice… The artery's lifeblood ready to be spilt.

Tsuruga-senpai. Ren! Hurry!

From far away, it seemed, she heard her killer's voice.

"Try not to struggle. Your memory will be kept safe forever in my photographs."

Sluggish in her mind, Kyoko's eyes turned to look at his face. If only just to curse him in her final moments.

In front of the empty shower stool as he held her down, his dark eyes were wide and manic in glee. But behind his head, a flicker of movement caught Kyoko's attention.

Her eyes widened as the DSLR camera whizzed through the air, a violent pendulum on its thick strap.

Unfortunately, the Shinigami saw her reaction and turned at the last second.

The dense three kilogram weight slapped him solidly across the side of the face, and with the extra force being swung by its camera strap, Kyoko could tell that it was a significant blow. The grown man stumbled back into the bathroom wall and slid to the ground, his forehead and face bloody and already beginning to swell.

But he was not unconscious.

Almost in disbelief, the killer staggered to his feet, tripping only once as he shakily wiped the blood dripping down the side of his face from the cuts on his forehead and nose. Slowly, beginning to shake with rage, his head rose to look at his attacker.

Kyoko's head snapped over to Erika standing frozen in the bathroom doorway.

"THE KEY!" Kyoko screamed. "GET THE HANDCUFF KEY!"

Howling a slew of curses, the murderer launched himself across the room at his abused captive. Shrieking and panicked, Erika swung the camera again, but this time the killer wrenched it out of her grasp and threw it to the side. It thunked heavily against the side of the tub, but Kyoko paid it no mind.

"Get away from her you bastard!" Kyoko screamed, wrenching again and again at her handcuffs. She could hear Erika screaming and thuds as the two struggled about the hotel room beyond the bathroom door. But the metal cuffs held. "Erika!"

Casting about herself for something – anything – the detective's eyes caught on a piece of metal glimmering on the bathroom floor. The small pile that the killer had left on the side of the tub – his wallet, the hotel key, and razor blade receipt – had toppled to the floor in the violent struggle. But the piece of metal – Kyoko's eyes lit on a small key half-buried under the receipt soaking up the spilt bath water.

Her handcuff key.

Without anyone to stop her anymore, Kyoko clambered halfway out of the bathtub – as far as the cuffs would let her – sending water spilling everywhere across the floor. The small tsunami lifted the key up and floated it just out of reach.

To her right, Kyoko could see through the doorway as Erika tried unsuccessfully to fend her abuser off with a chair. Cursing, the detective stretched her leg out, straining against the handcuffs, scraping desperately at the key with the tip of her ungainly toes, frozen stiff by the cold tub water and hauling their ungainly water-logged sock.

One clumsy move nudged the key a centimeter away.

Erika screamed.

Breathing shaky, Kyoko strained even farther, her shoulder screaming, threatening to pop out of its socket. Her foot scrabbled madly across the floor. After what felt like an eternity, the sole of her foot clanked against something metal.

With a yell, Kyoko kicked the key backward toward the tub. Fine motor skills overwhelmed by adrenaline and cold, her fingers struggled to pick the stupidly small key off the floor and fit it into the handcuff lock. She only dropped it once into the tub before the cuffs snapped open.

Finally free, the detective stood. The room tilted and whirled around her like some unhappy carnival ride. Her head spun, the residual effect of the drugs and the blood, still thankfully inside her body, as it sank like a stone to her feet. Like a drunk, Kyoko stumbled out of the bathroom, clutching the doorframe.

Her eyes immediately lit on the scene before her. The fancy hotel room was in ruins, furniture thrown about and carpet speckled with blood. At the foot of the bed, Erika was on the floor struggling less and less vigorously as the man on top of her tried to strangle her.

Lurching forward at first slowly and then with more fury-fueled momentum, Kyoko bellowed and charged. Distracted, the killer let go of Erika's neck and turned. The poor woman gasped for air just as Kyoko bowled over the man, sending all three tumbling across the floor.

Head ringing from the fall, Kyoko scrambled to her feet, casting about herself for the murderer. He had fallen farther across the room, close to his camera gear bag, and Kyoko was too far away to stop him as he reached forward, his hands scrambling inside to one of the pockets. It came out holding a long, cruel knife.

Stumbling a step backward, Kyoko pulled a chair in front of her to use as a defense. It felt heavy in her malnourished arms. The medicine's side effects made her head spin.

Seeing her small struggle with the chair and her shallow breathing, the Shinigami grinned, the smirk a snake made before swallowing its prey whole. He started forward, knife raised.

Then the camera lens bounced off the back of his head.

"H-hey! Look at me you… you…" Erika swallowed hard as the man's head whipped around to stare at her as she cowered in the bathroom doorway. Her rage galvanized her gaze to meet his, lending her voice strength as it rose. "You… lying… psychotic bastard!"

Something in the killer snapped. The look of glee on his face turned into a vicious snarl as he sensed the last psychological restraint he had placed on Erika burn into oblivion.

"You…!" The murderer snarled, spittle flying from his lips. "You ruined EVERYTHING!"

"NO!" Kyoko screamed, hand raised. Erika looked at her, the words forming on her lips as the Shinigami staggered forward, knife swinging downward toward her chest.

 _Thank you._

Behind her, Kyoko heard the hotel door burst open.

"FREEZE! Tokyo PD!"

Half-distracted, the killer stabbed at Erika as he turned, the long knife burying itself in her left shoulder. Kyoko screamed her name. She felt hands, strong arms surrounding her body, pulling her away. She screamed Erika's name again, fighting to get away and help her.

The distraction gave Erika enough time to push her abuser away. Time crawled along as Kyoko watched, eyes wide, as he fell backward into the bathroom. One leg shot out backward to catch him, only to find itself slip on the slick hard plastic case of the DSLR camera.

As he fell, on instinct, the man reached out for Erika, his eyes wide with fear. Fear of death. Clutching her wounded shoulder, Erika's drooping left hand flinched for a millisecond before stilling.

The Shinigami's leg swept out from under him, launching him backward toward the white tub. There was one loud, final crack as he struck the back of his head and neck on the cold, unforgiving tile.

Kyoko was only numb as she weakly fought. The strong arms were still pulling her, dragging her out of the room as men in full tactical gear – bulletproof vests, helmets, and rifles – flooded in. The last thing she saw before she cleared the doorway was Erika sinking to the floor, blood dripping freely from her arm, and the lifeless body of a serial killer slumped against a stark white bathtub.

Sound and life rushed back like a wave washing ashore.

"Mogami-san! Mogami-san! It's me! I'm here! You're safe!" The voice shouting over her shoulder gained a body as the strong arms spun her around. Ren's worried dark eyes bore down at hers as he clutched the sides of her face.

"Tsu…ruga…senpai?"

Half in disbelief, Kyoko could only stumble forward into his embrace and sob as her partner repeated over and over again, "I'm here, Mogami-san. I'm here."

 **-x-**

At least two-dozen emergency and government vehicles lit up the front of the hotel, an urgent flashing lightshow. Amidst the flow of chaos around them, the two detectives sat on the tailgate of an open ambulance, the busyness fading away.

Ren shuffled in his seat and glanced over at his partner next to him. A blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders and a hasty gauze bandage taped to her cheek, Kyoko looked so small. She was sipping on the can of hot coffee he had hurriedly purchased from the hotel lobby's vending machine.

He eyed her as she slurped the steaming liquid, almost hungrily. As soon as this logistical nightmare was over, he was going to make sure she had a decent meal. Then she winced, her bruised and bandaged hand coming up to nurse a small cut on the corner of her mouth.

Ren couldn't stop own hand's automatic movement. He leaned forward slowly and ran careful fingers over the cut, examining how deep it was, whether it too would need stitches along with the laceration on her cheek.

Kyoko seemed frozen as he took his time, searching all the cuts and bruises on her face.

"I'd kill him," Ren growled suddenly, eyes narrowed. Then he blinked and lowered his hand. "You know. If he wasn't already…"

Turning away – Ren couldn't tell with the ambulance backlighting her face if she was blushing or not – the junior detective finally managed, "I-Is Koenji-san going to be ok?"

"They rushed her straight to the hospital," he replied. Sensing her discomfort, he leaned back to settle a respectable distance away. But still close enough that he could feel her shoulder tap his when she shifted in her seat. "Last I heard, she was in a stable condition."

"Oh, thank goodness." A tear streaked down her cheek. She swallowed hard and frowned. "Kotonami Kanae and–"

"Kotonami Kanae and Amamiya Chiori were found by our officers in Maeda's home. They're at the hospital too getting checked out."

"Good." Another solitary tear snaked down her face. Ren watched it get soaked up by the bandage on her cheek. He longed to reach out and wipe it away.

Then, as Koga's words echoing in his mind, Ren figured. Why the hell not?

"Mogami-san." Ren turned to her abruptly, eyes boring into hers, caution abandoned. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for everything that's happened. Every moment of every day, I felt so afraid. I can't even imagine how it must've been for you."

As if unable to handle the intensity of his stare, Kyoko ducked her head, tracing the rim of the can. Ren's only hope that her reaction wasn't a rejection was the fact that she shivered and as she collected the blanket around her shoulders, she leaned closer to him, not away.

"I was terrified… I was so scared that my life was going to end in a place like that," Kyoko said carefully. Then she looked up at him, her eyes sorrowful and intense and _so full_ , it almost startled Ren. She continued, her voice growing surer with each word. "And I was scared I'd never get to apologize to you. I said some pretty terrible things – things that I didn't mean."

"Same…" Ren leaned in. "I–"

But she continued with a small chuckle. The interruption came out hollow and mirthless as she turned away again, her shoulders wilting. "You were right though. The sting operation was a dangerous plan. It was beyond my abilities–"

"No!"

Kyoko startled at his sudden interjection, looking up at him in confusion.

"I only meant…" Ren paused and stared down at her intently, his words deliberate. "I only meant that I wanted someone else to be the bait. I couldn't have stood to lose you."

Kyoko froze. Then just as quickly, she unfroze, gaze darting away. "That's very kind of you, but… I'm replaceable. You shouldn't waste your emotions and energy caring about someone like me…"

"You're not replaceable." Ren said, willing his voice to carry as much confidence as he felt. He took a deep breath and then said, "I really do care about you, you know."

"T-Tsuruga-senpai, you really shouldn't say such misleading–"

Ren interrupted, placing his hand over her smaller one resting on the ambulance's metal floor. "I mean it. More than my kouhai. More than a valuable coworker. More than a friend. I care about you."

He waited and wondered. Would she blush and faint? Scream and flee? Outright reject him?

For her part, Kyoko seemed to take this statement of his feelings well, only sitting there, staring out at the chaos of policemen, paramedics, and detectives running about, and thinking. Finally, she wilted. "You mean that you care about me like… a little sister?"

At the end of his rope, and unsure how else to convey something that he felt was a very clear point – something that only a woman like Mogami Kyoko could obscure – Ren sighed and then leaned down to kiss her gently on the lips, lingering just the slightest bit before pulling away.

He watched as Kyoko's eyelids fluttered open, face turning bright red.

"Oh…" She said softly and then, her face aflame, leaned in again as Ren turned to her for another kiss, the lights and sirens once again fading into the background.

 **-x-**

* * *

Thank you all again for your patience with me finishing this "two"-shot! It took a while, but was definitely worth it!

 **VOTE in the REVIEWS:** **Do you want the next one-shot to be a Hikikomori (Shut-In) AU or a Mangaka (Manga author) AU? Or something different? I'm always open to ideas**!

 **Japanese Notes: **

**Ofuro** – a traditional Japanese bathtub with higher walls; usually found next to an ofuro is a small shower stall with a sitting stool

 **Seppuku** – Or as Western media calls it, "hara-kiri" is a highly ritualized method of suicide in which a disgraced noble or soldier takes a short sword and slits his own abdomen to either atone for or regain his honor after a mistake.

 **Kaishakunin** – An trusted associate of the seppuku participant who would stand behind the person about to commit suicide and use a katana to behead the person should they become too "cowardly" to take their own life and hesitate or try to run away from the ritual.

 **-x-**

 **MAILBAG : **I forgot that I didn't do a mailbag section last Shinigami chapter! I'll reply to all the reviews from Cabin Fever and Shinigami 2 here.

 **Guest:** Glad you got hooked! I hope this last part was soon enough for your tastes! Next time you comment, choose a name so I know who to call out in the Mailbag!

 **MWEH:** Hehe, gotcha! Glad I didn't have to keep you in suspense for yet another cliffhanger. Though I suppose there is Spy Beat and how I left _that_ … In response to your Cabin Fever review, I really enjoyed writing this AU! I'd find it hard to continue though with this level of wholesomeness xD And Lory makes the best deus ex machina for not only creating problems but solving them in the end.

 **Kaname671** : Thanks! I had a "damn" good time writing it! Hope you enjoyed the conclusion! As for your Cabin Fever review, yeah Sho definitely deserved what was coming to him! LOL

 **H-Nala** : Hehe no more cliff-hangers!

 **ELinkA:** Glad you enjoyed Cabin Fever!

 **A Musing Brunette:** LOL, glad you enjoyed the ending of Cabin Fever! I was snickering to myself as I was writing it. Definitely tried NOT to freak out my Starbucks barista…. xD

 **Ktoll9** : Nice! Glad you enjoyed Cabin Fever!


End file.
